Sammi Reinstein

2 results

Three Most Common Developer Skill Gaps Impacting Your Business

When we survey IT leaders about what's holding them back from adopting modern data platforms like MongoDB, skill gaps are a commonly cited top reason. And from our experience, most teams don't even realize that these skill gaps exist in the first place. The past few years have been a time of rapid change for developers, with teams looking to simplify their architecture and increase agility to build smarter apps that meet the needs of their users. To meet these demands and keep up with technology advancements like event-driven architectures, in-app analytics, and now AI, organizations have begun to look towards transformation and modernizing their legacy systems. It's critical that when organizations do these transformations, they bring their people along with them. But according to Deloitte Insights , that doesn’t always happen. They reported only 30% of workers feel supported by their company’s skill development opportunities. Figure 1: Dissatisfaction with professional development investments The skills developers are equipped with are widening from what companies require, creating a skill gap and creating risk in their businesses — leading to increased costs through performance, productivity, and security issues. To help companies close these skill gaps, MongoDB’s Instructor-Led Training team created a tool called MongoDB Skill Scanner . This tool has helped companies across industries to identify skill shortages and create data-driven training programs to improve MongoDB proficiency, increase productivity, and reduce risk and errors. Skill Scanner also helps save time and money spent on training by making these programs extremely efficient. Now that several hundred developers at a variety of organizations have used Skill Scanner, we have early data on 3 of the most common skill gaps in developers that your team should be looking out for (and providing upskill opportunities for). Skill gap #3: Aggregation The third most common skill gap identified through MongoDB Skill Scanner is aggregation . An aggregation pipeline consists of one or more stages that process documents: Each stage performs an operation on the input documents. For example, a stage can filter documents, group documents, and calculate values. The documents that are output from a stage are passed to the next stage. An aggregation pipeline can return results for groups of documents. For example, return the total, average, maximum, and minimum values. Lack of knowledge on aggregations severely limits the type of queries that developers can create with MongoDB. This means developers end up creating more logic in the application server instead of the database server making applications become harder to maintain. So what does this mean for your business? A skill shortage in this area can cause slow applications and operations by increasing the hardware size, which also creates more expenses for your team. Aggregation pipelines, especially for non-JavaScript back-ends, may seem complex at first, but with native mapping in each driver, this takes processing capabilities to the next level, without having to leave your usual language. Skill gap #2: Indexes and optimization Indexes and Optimization are the second most common skill deficit we see among developers. When an application is slow, teams will jump into action trying to diagnose what the problem might be. A common missed step is taking a step back and re-evaluating their indexing strategy, which is a fundamental element of managing any database. MongoDB supports a wide variety of index types and language-specific sort orders to support complex access patterns. Understanding how to create the right indexes for your data structure (and when to remove unnecessary indexes) is crucial for efficient query operations. A lack of knowledge in indexing and optimization can lead to a variety of technical issues including: Lack of indexes, leading to slower queries Excess or redundant indexes, which impact write performance and disk consumption These issues are a common culprit to rising TCO and slower applications. Skill gap #1: Security Lastly, by far the most common developer skill gap we saw from Skill Scanner results is Security. This is also one of the most costly errors a team can make. Compliance with security regulations avoids expensive audit findings and greatly reduces risk. Insufficient knowledge of proper security measures may lead to: Non-compliance with industry regulations resulting in fines and legal penalties Outages or disruptions, leading to downtime Reputational damage Data loss or breach Ensuring developers know the basics of the applied security best practices ensures that no one accidentally opens up security loopholes. Identifying team skill gaps Before jumping into upskilling the team, it’s critical to understand where your team stands and what skills areas they need to improve on so that not only can you close the gap, but close it in a productive, data-driven way. MongoDB Skill Scanner asks a series of multiple choice questions and then provides you with a clear understanding of each individual’s level of expertise across a set of technical skills that are critical for success working with MongoDB in their role. To get started with MongoDB Skill Scanner, contact our team here to retrieve access for yourself or your team. Closing the skill gap Instructor-Led Training empowers teams through highly relevant training content, delivered live by expert instructors to maximize productivity and equip developers and DBAs with the skills they need to succeed — leading to higher employee retention, a better user experience, and reduced errors and inefficiencies. Instructor-Led Training has courses for all skill levels and roles, meaning your team only learns what they need when they need it. We have multiple training delivery methods to match your organization's needs including Private Training (classes are delivered on your schedule, onsite or remotely), Public Training (remote-only and open to the public), and Precision Learning Programs (white-glove MongoDB training initiatives with individualized learning plans). For more information on course details, learning paths, and training schedules, view our Training Catalog . If you're interested in trying out MongoDB Skill Scanner or want to explore the MongoDB Training programs further, you can reach out to your account representative or contact us directly.

August 7, 2023

Using MongoDB Skill Scanner to Build Better Training Programs

Technology leaders know that transformation is about more than just adopting modern technologies like MongoDB. The entire organization has to rally behind change — which is no easy task. The skills that modern development teams need are evolving faster than ever, and hiring to fill skills gaps can be too time-consuming and expensive of a process for many organizations. So it’s imperative that we plan for how we want to bring our people with us on our modernization journey, and proactively upskill them on the technologies we’re betting on. Because what happens if you choose MongoDB, but your developers don’t know how to use it? CIOs know that training programs are easier said than done. EY reported that 30% of CIOs acknowledge that their training programs are ineffective, and that they’re struggling to retain talent because of it. These leaders come to us to help them build and execute their MongoDB training programs , and seek advice on two extremely common yet critical challenges: How do we get away from the less effective one-size-fits-all approach? How do we measure the ROI of our training program and connect it to business impact? How we use MongoDB Skill Scanner to overcome training challenges Our Professional Services team uses a tool called MongoDB Skill Scanner to address both of these challenges. This tool helps us provide these three benefits to our customers looking to build a training program: Improve MongoDB proficiency: Teams can use Skill Scanner to quickly and easily assess the MongoDB skill gaps of their team members and gain a comprehensive understanding of their team’s MongoDB skills baseline. Increased productivity and accuracy: When team members have a comprehensive understanding of MongoDB, they are able to work more quickly and accurately on projects, leading to increased productivity and a higher quality of work. Save time and money with targeted Training: Using Skill Scanner, customers can avoid wasting time and money on trial-and-error learning. Instead, they can focus on improving their skills in a more targeted and efficient way with right-sized training plans. By leveraging this data, our customers’ engineers can engage in the right training at the right time, targeted for their job role and specific skill shortages. When a training program is built this way, engineers maximize their knowledge retention and minimize time away from their projects. Skill Scanner includes three role-based assessments, one for developers, database administrators, and DevOps respectively. Through a series of multiple choice questions, Skill Scanner provides customers with a clear understanding of their level of expertise across a set of technical skills that are critical for success in their role. After submitting the assessment, engineers will get results in each skill area outlining if they are beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Why data-driven training programs matter We’ve learned that it’s not enough to just tell teams to go watch training videos or webinars on their own, or to place everyone in the same one-size-fits-all program. Skills gaps vary from team to team, and individual to individual. The one-size-fits-all approach of some programs may not address individual learners' needs, wasting time and making it difficult for them to acquire new skills. By using Skill Scanner, we’re able to interpret this data to help determine which training courses your team should take. But we don’t only capture this data before doing training; we use Skill Scanner again after training programs are completed to see where immediate improvements have been made. This helps technology leaders prove the impact and ROI of their training, and gives them the confidence that their teams are ready to be successful with MongoDB. Developing a Precision Learning Program To go even further, our team can work with you to build a Precision Learning Program, where we use Skill Scanner data to build learning schedules that are unique to each individual. These schedules include a variety of short, blended, learning events such as classes, technical workshops, self-paced exercises, and project coaching. We’ve seen PLP lead to higher knowledge retention and of course, measurable project results. A customer who recently concluded their PLP saw a 43% increase in knowledge retention. Getting started building a personalized training program Skill gaps aren’t a novel problem IT leaders are facing. But with new digital courses, training, and technologies, the resources to close these gaps are at your fingertips. Skill Scanner and Precision Learning Program have been specifically designed to empower teams by offering targeted training that enhances their understanding of MongoDB. These short training events are carefully crafted to close skill gaps without compromising developer productivity. We’ve seen a variety of customers use this tool to help train their team’s individual needs, from needing to upskill new hires on their teams, projects with new MongoDB products, migrating to MongoDB Atlas, and more. It also saves your business the hours developers would've wasted searching for answers (and developers don’t want to spend their time that way, either). “We need help getting from point A to point B and feel MongoDB is uniquely positioned to help” — CTO at large insurance firm If you're interested in trying out MongoDB Skill Scanner or want to explore the MongoDB Precision Learning Program further, you can reach out to your account representative or contact us directly .

June 7, 2023