Impact of university education on software quality skill-set of HR in software outsourcing industry of Pakistan

Abstract

The authors of this paper have attempted to suggest an ideal set of software quality skills for IT Outsourcing companies that could boost software export revenues of software export-focused IT firms in Pakistan by enhancing much needed quality factor in their products and services. This ideal set of skills is extracted by assessing the quality related human resource from top performing IT outsourcing companies in Pakistan. In order to identify quality skills that are not imparted to IT professionals with adequate emphasis, a curricula based analysis of software quality related programs in top Pakistani IT universities was done. As a result of this analysis, again a set of imparted software quality skills at top Pakistani universities was identified. Authors believe that skills that are not addressed either at university end or IT company's end, can be incorporated in curriculum of software related courses offered at Pakistani IT universities. This step would result in enrichment of local IT resource which without requisite quality skills has to rely solely on expensive foreign quality certifications. The authors' research is based on two basic but crucial assumptions (i) an IT professional who gained software quality skills through his/her university education years has a significant positive impact on quality of software produced by his organization (ii) Most software-exporting companies outperform others due to their emphasis on software quality. No previous studies done locally, have been able to establish a clear relation between demand of industrial software quality skills and requisite supply of skills from universities. © 2007 Springer.