Page - 178 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

178 I. Trejos-Zelaya The ‘IT skills’ gap refers to the shortage of qualified candidates to fulfil open positions in occupations related to digital technologies. The problem has been reportedseveral times [12,13,14], and it appears in manyways [8,15]: • A deficitofeducatedcandidates to fulfil jobopenings • Candidateswhoare inadequatelypreparedforcertain ITpositions • New occupationsgeneratedby technologicalchangeand innovation • Novelbusinessmodels,products, andservices • Need to retrainpersonnel forassimilatingacquired technologies • Requirement to operate and maintain informationsystems built on technologies no longer taughtat universities • Impaireddiversitydue tounderrepresentationofwomenandethnicminorities in the IT workforce, which negatively impacts innovation, productivity, creativity andprosperity • Institutions slow in designingand updatingcurricula to educate future technolo- gists anddevelopingprogrammesto retrain thosealreadyemployed Most Latin American countries report that demand of IT skills exceeds supply. However, there ismore to thosesituations: • Diversity of skills required in the labourmarket is scarce or even unknown(e.g. storage, digital forensics, data science, cloud computing, blockchain, artificial intelligence, InternetofThings). • Qualityof theeducationofITgraduates isuneven:rangeofknowledge,depthof know-how,significanceofexperience,certificationof skills, masteryof domain, in addition toanunderstandingof theirdiscipline’s foundations. 3.1 SoftwareEngineering As a computing sub-discipline, Software Engineering’s origins can be traced back to the 1960s, particularly the first Software Engineering Conference sponsored by theNATOinOctober1968[16].Herewequote somerelevantpartsof the report: The discussions cover all aspects of software including – Relation of software to the hardware ofcomputers – Design of software – Production, or implementation of software – Distributionof software – Service on software Someotherdiscussions focussedonsubjects like: – The problems of achieving sufficient reliability in the data systems which are becoming increasingly integrated into thecentral activitiesofmodern society – The difficulties ofmeeting schedules and specifications on large software projects – The education of software (or data systems) engineers – The highly controversial question of whether software should be priced separately from hardware