Software Development Talent: How to Attract & Retain

In the software industry, job positions are constantly available and typically hard to fill. The IT demand is high, while the supply is relatively low in this field, which means anyone with a software development skill set often has their choice of companies to work for.

Attracting Talent

To attract talent to a software development position, many companies will try to offer unique incentives to entice them. This could be flexible work like remote positions or differing schedules depending on what time developers enjoy working. Offering a large base of training and a team to have around them are also great ways to catch the eye of someone looking to switch jobs.


Most importantly, developers want to know that a company is supportive, respectful, and appreciative of their employees. When posting a job or attending job fairs to find new employees, managers should pay particular attention to how they explain their company values and ethics – these are things that potential employees will want to identify with directly. Once it is time to interview the person, focusing on how the company can allow the potential employee to grow is a great point of view the interviewer should take.

Keeping the Talent You Have

As a manager or CEO of a company, you want to retain all the good talent you have in the organization. Fortunately, there are a few ways that managers can encourage employees to stay within the company.


For one thing, companies should do everything they can to make the jobs of software developers easier – like providing updated technology and code bases that are up to date with company projects. Allowing developers the freedom to create software development talent without micromanagement and extensive rules/procedures is another way to keep them happy.


Nobody likes to do the same thing every day, and the creative side of developers will only thrive when they can try new things and innovate. Providing a software development team with interesting projects with the freedom to brainstorm and solve problems on their own gives them the ability to shape the company and have a stake in what they are creating.


Lastly, ensuring that everyone within the organization aligns with the values of the organization is key for making a happy and functional workplace. software development talent should feel that they fit like a puzzle piece within the organization.


Finding talent and retaining them are entirely two different tasks of management that are crucial in keeping a company moving forward. When it is time for your business to find new software development talent and are unsure of how to attract them, give Charter Global a call today to see how we can help!

What is UI & UX Design?

User Interface Development is defined as the development of websites, web applications, mobile applications, and software. The User Interface plays a key role in the software development life cycle [SDLC]. Most people assume UI development is all about creating websites and writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, but user interface goes far beyond these technical terms. The goal of the user interface is to make the user’s interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals.

Think about it this way: The user experiences only front end interactions, such as the look and feel of the website/application. More often than not, they don’t concern themselves with the back end – like app design, coding elements, or methodologies employed in content layout. What’s more, users need to feel engaged and at ease when they visit your website.  That’s where UI engineers come into the picture – to fulfill this task.

Cultivating a User Interface can be divided into two phases in website/application/software development:

1. Research + Design
2. Development

Research and Design:

Research and analysis are all about interviewing users project stakeholders and gathering their input to create a requirements document that includes personas, user scenarios, user behavior, and user experience evaluation metrics. During this phase, it is also important to understand the target audience so as to better cultivate a user experience design.

Business analysts and a user experience team usually lead the research phase. Both teams collect all information and inputs from users and project stakeholders in order to discuss technical terms with developers and project managers. Lastly, they prepare final documentation.

With the help of documentation, UX teams start the design process. They first create the wire frames to bring a rough idea to the project stakeholders and users.

Wire frames are presented as a comprehensive screen layout consisting of black and white sketches of every screen in the application. At this point, the visual and graphic design processes dictating the visual appeal have not yet begun.

For More Information, Please go through the website:

https://www.charterglobal.com/what-is-ui-and-ux-design/

What Makes Scrum Teams So Effective?

We know Scrum Teams are one of the most effective ways to get a project developed. But how exactly do they do it? Is it a secret that only the team knows and can implement? Where did the team learn it? Is it about motivation? Is there a way to use their strategies in other ways in a business?

The root of how a scrum team can be so effective boils down to three key areas: How the team works together, the values of members, and the expertise each of them brings to the table.

How the Team Works Together

Everyone knows that a team with dysfunctional members won’t get anywhere. On the other hand, a collaborative team that has like-minded individuals that are each aware of the value everyone brings in will work extremely well. A scrum team knows the dynamic between each other and can play off of everyone’s strengths to form an elite problem-solving group perfect for companies that need innovative project development solutions.

The Values of Members

You can form a team based on similar held values and still get a team that isn’t as effective as scrum – this is because of the specific values that are placed in importance for a scrum team. Scrum teams are innovative, customer-focused, and put a lot of stress on communication between members. As a highly motivated group, the team uses their strong beliefs to propel the project onward and forward through any snag that might develop.

The Expertise Each Member Brings

Each member of a scrum team is extremely knowledgeable about multiple areas of development to better help with the flow of the project. Because each person can work on a variety of sub-tasks within the project development, there is less time wasted on waiting for a piece to be handed off to the next person in the team. This cross-functional knowledge also helps each of the members understand the problems each of them might face through the timeline and can brainstorm alongside each other for better solutions.

Altogether, these three things allow a scrum team to provide some of the best development services out in the industry. The composition of a scrum team is how they can be so successful – which is why it can be hard to create one. Let Charter Global find the perfect flexible, dynamic scrum team for you so you don’t have to deal with the hassle of sifting through hundreds of applications!  

Read More; https://www.charterglobal.com/what-makes-scrum-teams-so-effective/

How Will AI and Machine Learning Transform Marketing?

One thing about marketing is that it will never stop evolving. With technology updates, marketing has to continuously adapt to the ways people learn, engage with other people, and use products/services. We have seen in the past that the companies that are late in the game of incorporating technology in their marketing have suffered, which is why it is so important to jump onto thriving trends as they surface in this industry.

Advantages of AI & Machine Learning in Marketing

Marketing will never fully cut out the personal touches of marketing because no matter what, people know people best. However, infusing AI and machine learning into marketing tactics can make it easier for marketers to focus on the more important aspects of their jobs. Automation of certain things can reduce the time marketing employees spend on research, and machine learning can pick out trends and patterns across huge data sets that normally would take someone days to go through by hand.

When working with companies or customers that span the entire globe, handling all of the information can be extremely overwhelming. AI can help collect, verify, and organize all of this information into more manageable sets for real-time analysis by an expert marketer. Doing marketing tasks more efficiently is one of the greatest benefits to AI and machine learning.

Integrating AI with Employees

For employees that have been doing their workload a certain way for many years, the introduction of AI that can reduce their tasks can put them on the defensive. Instead of being relieved that they can now spend more time on more important tasks, employees might fear that they will eventually be replaced entirely by machines. By slowly integrating AI within a team and fully explaining the effects and reasons behind doing so is a great way to belay any fears your employees might have.

Taking a step by step approach to this new integration is also important. With new technology comes a learning curve, especially for people that are not used to AI or any machine learning types of software in marketing. Once all of your team is comfortable with one step, move on to the next until it has been fully integrated.

As marketers begin to appreciate the tedious aspects of their jobs being reduced by machine learning solutions, we believe that the industry will better be prepared to focus on the targeted customers themselves. Without pages and pages of data to break down and sift through, marketers can better utilize their relationship and personal marketing skills to better engage with brands, customers, and businesses as a whole.

Wanting your marketing team to highlight their best skills is something we completely understand at Charter Global, which is why we offer many machine learning solutions. When you are ready to find hidden patterns in your data, predict your customer behavior, and utilize your team more effectively, give us a call to see how we can help!


Read More: https://www.charterglobal.com/how-will-ai-and-machine-learning-transform-marketing/

Scrum as a Service vs. Traditional Contracting

When a business is wanting to find an outside source for a development project, there are a lot of options out there. For the most part, the choices boil down to two different types: Scrum as a service and traditional contracting.

Traditional contracting is just that – the option most businesses have chosen for quite some time. Generally, a rigid timeline for the project is created and the team follows a contract centered on specific deliverable promised by the contractor.

On the other hand, scrum as a service acts as a flexible development option that is rather new to the industry. The scrum team creates an agile framework to produce software quickly being able to solve issues that might arise along the way with innovative solutions.

Three major points must be taken into account when a company is preparing to outsource:

1. Are you looking for a specific task completed or a successful development implementation?

While a contractor will most certainly complete a specific task without having to worry about the overall success of the project. Scrum teams are more focused on a successful development implementation even if it means altering the end goal a bit to ensure the product will be prosperous and effective for its users. Although a business might think they know exactly what they’re looking for in a software, a scrum team can more clearly see what needs to happen for it to be an innovative solution that will better fit the needs at hand.

2. What style of a relationship are you looking for in the team: Independent or Collaborative?

Although contractors will communicate throughout the software development process, their teams don’t tend to problem-solve together. Contractors won’t feel a responsibility for what happens to the software after it is developed and will only produce what their contract requires. Scrum teams by nature are extremely collaborative, brainstorming together for flexible solutions during frequent meetings. Communication is a top priority with a cross-functional scrum team, and they will make it a point to act as an extension of the company they have been hired by.

3. Do you need a cut and dry or cutting-edge software?

Traditional contracting utilizes very little creativity when developing software due to the contract “rules” the team abides by. With little room for movement within the contract, the hiring company can often be frustrated with the result. Innovation is a scrum team’s strong suit. As a scrum team has the freedom and flexibility to try new things and take risks, they are the superior choice for a company wanting original software.

Choosing between a traditional contractor and a scrum team all depends on what a company is looking for in a developer team. If you decide you need a reliable scrum team for your project or a contractor, schedule a consultation with Charter Global to find you the perfect fit.


Read More: https://www.charterglobal.com/scrum-as-a-service-vs-traditional-contracting/

What is Agile Software Development?

As technology has improved, the need for a more flexible development operation has increased. In response, the agile software development process was created.

The agile software development methods are explained as a concise timeline for a project with specific phases that must be completed before moving onto the next. These phases are often called “sprints,” as the phase ends just as quickly as it begins. Even if some people disagree on how complete the phase is, once the time ends out for the sprint, the team must move on to the next phase.

While this might sound detrimental to the project overall, it forces the development team to produce the highest quality work, collaborates effectively with others, and follow along with a strict schedule – making it very difficult to overrun the timeline.

Agile software development is a solution for projects that need flexible solutions. As team members come up against problems during a particular phase, they are much more likely to ask for help or advice in a collaborative sense in this method than a traditional one. The agile framework encourages simple and automated solutions wherever possible to keep the project streamlined and on task.

Instead of having a disconnect between developers and the business side of a project, they often are required to work hand in hand within agile software development. Teams using this method are extremely self-organized and motivated to provide quality work. Although the method stresses individual responsibility, it also requires a lot of face to face communication (often through daily brainstorming meetings) to get everyone on the same page throughout the timeline.

Where the traditional method would focus on a centralized center of authority that makes the most decisions, in agile software development the majority of decisions are made by the team throughout the project. Because they aren’t focused on following the red tape of a traditional process, agile software development gives teams more responsibility and freedom for their part in the project. This also means that most members of an agile team will be cross-functional and able to pick up on the different requirements of the project themselves.

In a rapidly changing technological world, getting your software developed quickly is crucial to staying ahead of your competitors. When you are ready to shed your traditional development method for an agile one, get in contact with the Charter Global team!

Why Recruiters are essential to a Company’s hiring process?

For hiring managers, finding the right applicants can be extremely challenging, time-consuming, and expensive. Utilizing a recruiter can take a lot of the stress from the extensive task off of the employer or manager and streamline the process. Recruiters are often better able to search through different areas to find applicants and narrow down the selection to those with the highest chance of being hired.

Recruiters are able to find applicants through job fairs, by going directly to colleges, internal databases, social media, and making job postings online. The process that recruiters must go through to find the best applicants is not easy or simple – and often, must change depending on the position needing to be filled. Therefore, recruiters must be extremely knowledgeable of what a position in an organization needs in an applicant, where best to find quality leads, and how to be flexible enough to adapt as new situations in an organization arise.

As a recruiter, every day will look different. New positions open up, others are filled, job fairs are held, and there are often hundreds of applicants to sort through. For a recruiter, everything in their day is fast-paced. Without doing their job, an organization can lose a lot of money as the right people are not there to keep it running. Although many people don’t think much about recruiters after they are hired, recruitment consultants are a crucial aspect of a company.

Recruiters are great at talking to people. They enjoy seeing the potential that people have and can predict how someone will thrive in a position. For the most part, recruiters are quick thinkers that love getting to know a variety of different types of people to see where they would best fit in a company.

Although most companies have an internal HR team already in place. The goal of the recruiter is to assist while HR keeps the company running. Without knowledgeable recruiters to find the correct employees, an organization would fall apart quickly.

When you are looking for IT candidates, don’t get overwhelmed with creating the extensive processes of finding, sorting, and qualifying them. Charter Global has over 75+ recruiters available ready to take recruitment off your hands! We are able to find the perfect applicants for your position in no time, with 24/7, 365-day a year staff available.