Grassroots efforts are instrumental to achieving 50 and five by 35 strategy

Mark McCormack is the Managing Director of Aflac Northern Ireland, and he also serves as the Chair of Software NI. We sat down to explore Software NI's plans to grow the local software sector to 50,000 jobs and ￡5 billion in gross value added (GVA) by the year 2035. [Source: 50 and Five by 35 strategy]

From Mark’s viewpoint, his role, along with the CEO and board of Software NI, is to steer a grassroots campaign that will be led by more than 100 member organisations.

“We need to define a vision for how we grow and evolve the software industry, and create space for member companies to help shape how we tackle this lofty ambition,” he says.

Software NI's strategy is to build a grassroots coalition from within all corners of Northern Irish society, demonstrating how much the software sector impacts the whole country.

Mark points to the establishment of four Working Groups as central to manifesting this. He says that “engagement with the government is overarching all that we do, because the government often holds the purse strings for future success.”

He discusses how much of the strategy is about “creating the right environment for change,” and that it is about helping companies that haven’t even been invented yet – the next generation of businesses.

“We aren’t fully defining some areas, and that’s been intentional, because we want the strategy that we commit to, and the actions that we take, to be driven by members with diverse opinions and experiences,” he says.

Working Group 1: Education

“How do we bring more focus and better quality to the skills and topics that we’d like children to focus on?” This rhetorical question is one of the things driving Software NI's vision.

“There are some challenges here. First, there isn’t a well-defined focus on teaching coding or software in secondary schools. Not many children get the opportunity to write a programming language or develop a website,” Mark notes.

Why is that? He explains that the way teachers are trained, is partly the answer.

“Our teaching colleges don’t have a computing teaching skills track. Our teachers are excellent, but they may struggle to help tech-savvy young people, when they weren’t offered this focus themselves. When we provide them with the knowledge and understanding, they will pass it on to future generations.”

With this in mind, Software NI created its Tech Teach programme – to get software companies to help mentor teachers to give greater understanding, skills and confidence in this space. So far, almost 60 teachers have come through the programme, being paired with mentors from within the software industry. More can be done to build this programme, centred around an ethos of greater collaboration between business and education.

Mark also talks about “breaking the traditional dynamic,” where the brightest students have historically been encouraged down traditional paths into medicine, law or accounting – and that girls and boys often follow gender-typical career paths, instead of other STEM sectors where their skills would be so welcome, like entrepreneurship and software engineering.

It can be surprising how early in education this begins, Mark notes.

“As good as our education system is, it’s less like a funnel and more like a syringe – kids start making choices around age 13 about the subjects they’ll carry forwards. We need to have a range of bridging programmes that demonstrate the promise of a career in software.”

Working Group 2: Skills

After secondary education, the onus is on universities, colleges and apprenticeships to become the fruitful grounds where software workers are gaining the right skillsets for success. Because software is constantly evolving, mid-career learning programmes are also instrumental for workers to keep up with the pace of change.

Mark asserts that software is a “people-centric industry.” He points out that the most valuable asset any company has is the talented people they employ – and greater collaboration can ensure workers are trained with the most needed technical skills and human skills.

Working Group 3: Sales and Scale

This group addresses the fact that many Northern Irish companies experience a gap in sales experience and ability as they scale up. Mark posits: “How do we grow our existing companies to give them greater access to markets outside the UK – particularly the EU, Middle East and North America?”

In 25 years, the Northern Irish software sector has gone from just a handful of companies to around 2,200 companies. Mark says that this “illustrates great change over two decades.”

More can be done to ensure that our existing software companies are scaling to great heights. He notes that software companies aren’t limited by geography – “their products can be deployed anywhere and everywhere,” he says.

Training up tomorrow’s sales teams is instrumental to achieving scalability.

Working Group 4: Future Landscape

This is the most forward-looking space, taking stock of where the software sector is heading.

Many questions will be explored by this group as they predict future trends. What new technology will emerge and how can it be applied in expected and unexpected ways? What are the things we could be particularly good at in NI? And how might this affect education, skills and scaling our companies?

Mark says, “if you want high quality software delivered at the best price point, look no further than NI. There is so much scope to build our reputation as a global centre for excellence.”

“It’s a team sport”

Mark concludes by pointing out that software has “never been about people sitting silently at computers in a dark room.” He says the software sector is very much a team sport.

“There are roles for a whole range of people from designers, to product managers, to scrum masters, to engineers, to test automation and QA.”

It’s sowing the seeds with people from all corners of society that will enable Software NI's grassroots campaign to flourish.

More information about the Working Groups:

• Each working group is sponsored by two of Software NI’s board members
• Members are invited from within Software NI’s community
• Their actions are lined up with vision statements, and a given period is focused around three main objectives towards this aim
• Coordination is provided by Software NI’s central leadership

An event is being held on November 26th ?to arrange Working Groups. Anyone interested -- current Software NI members, or potential future members – are invited to send a message to Neil Hutcheson at [email protected] to sign up.