Overview
- Title
- European Software Skills Alliance (ESSA)
- Abstract
The EU-funded project ESSA (European Software Skills Alliance) aims to skill, upskill, and reskill individuals into high-demand software roles across Europe.
- Status
- On-going
- Duration
1 Dec 2020 – 30 Nov 2024
- Sector
Software services
- Countries
- Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, France, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Luxembourg, United Kingdom
- Scope of the project
The ESSA project adopts the latest European IT professional standards and frameworks such as EN16234-1 e-CF (European e-Competence Framework) together with EQF (European Qualifications Framework) ensuring a collective understanding of the new Software Skills Strategy between industry, education, and policymakers. ESSA focuses on skills for software professionals, and specifically:
- Skills required for the whole software lifecycle (software design, development, testing, troubleshooting, validation & verification, deployment, and maintenance).
- Skills required to strengthen the software engineering discipline — for example, skills to ensure software quality and security.
- Transversal (soft) skills related to analytical thinking, problem-solving, communication, collaboration, business understanding etc., are becoming increasingly important for professionals in software roles to perform their tasks.
ESSA targets five software-related job roles derived from the European ICT Professional Role Profiles (EN16234-1 e-CF): developer, test specialist, technical (software) specialist, DevOps expert, and Solution designer.
- Objectives
- Develop a European Software Skills Strategy that builds on a market-oriented needs analysis. As a result, it will present a roadmap to address the European software professional skills mismatches and foster concrete action at the member state and European levels.
- Design VET curricula & programmes, ready-to-use materials, and accreditation & certification frameworks that provide a European and practice-proofed approach to address the identified software skills mismatches by skilling, upskilling and reskilling individuals.
- Pilot the training programme (incl. the certification scheme) in different countries.
- Nurture an ESSA Software Skills Community that aims to connect individuals who come together to answer the up- and reskilling needs of the software sector in Europe.
- Short description
Europe needs a well-established strategy to skill, reskill, and upskill workers to cater for the emerging needs of our societies. Today, this need is nowhere more visible than in software development, delivery, and operation — a fast-growing sector where industry stakeholders, education and training providers, and professionals need to keep up with emerging technologies and new trends.
ESSA (European Software Skills Alliance) is an Erasmus+ project (2020-2024) that focuses on boosting growth and human capacity in the software services industry. ESSA's goal is to empower people to gain new skills, upskill further, and reskill themselves into high-demand professional software roles. To this end, ESSA develops VET curricula, training programmes, and material for education and training providers and organisations looking for skilled software professionals. Behind the project is a consortium of partners and experts in the software industry and digital policy from all around Europe.
Read more on the project’s website: https://www.softwareskills.eu/
- Key findings
- Most job vacancies in the software sector are from large companies
- Overall, Europe needs more software developers and demand is expected to steadily grow.
- In the period 2020-2025 organisations will recruit developers, solutions designers, and DevOps experts en masse.
- It is crucial for software professionals to have a solid understanding of programming principles so that they can quickly adapt to new languages.
- Software professionals should not only be experts in software but also have a broader set of non-technical skills, like soft skills or business skills.
- “Hard” skills like programming are the most in-demand with Java, Javascript, SQL, HTML, PHP, C++, C#, and Python being the most needed programming languages.
- Security management, agile project management, and software development lifecycle skills are needed and that software professionals with an understanding of the business are the assets organisations are looking for — now and in the future.
- Using standards and frameworks like e-CF to inform curricula design help to meet quality IT professional requirements.
- Education and training providers and companies must further work together based on complementarity to provide individuals with the hard (relevant to several profiles in the sector), soft, and job-related skills.
- More than 70% of organisations reported that one of the main frictions to upskilling and reskilling is that software professionals lack time for training.
- Shorter and modular programmes can facilitate upskilling or reskilling.
- Funding schemes, like the Digital Europe Programme, support all stakeholders such as SMEs so they can provide their staff with relevant (digital skills) training opportunities.
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