How to Spot and Close Capability Gaps  ## Metadata - Author: [[Joe Fay]] - Full Title: How to Spot and Close Capability Gaps - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #engineering-leadership - #capability-gaps - #workforce-planning Author: Joe Fay Source: LeadDev (article) Reference: https://leaddev.com/team/how-spot-and-close-capability-gaps date created: 2025-08-22 00:00 --- # Title: How to Spot and Close Capability Gaps ## Table of Contents: - 🔎 Overview & Context (#overview-context) - 🧭 What Is a “Capability”? (#what-is-capability) - 🧰 How to Identify Gaps (#identify-gaps) - 🧱 Where to Start: Strategy First (#strategy-first) - 🧪 Planning Approaches & Examples (#planning-approaches) - 🧩 Fill Gaps: Build, Buy, or Borrow (#fill-gaps) - 🌐 Networks: Pros and Cons (#networks) - 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Working with Recruiters (#recruiters) - 🏢 HR’s Role (#hr-role) - 🤝 Offers & Negotiations (#offers) - 🔁 What Next? (#what-next) - 📚 References (#references) Note: “timestamps” are represented as contextual anchors to key sections for easy navigation. ### References: - Gartner on IT skills shortages (not directly linked in-text; referenced within the article) - Quotes from: Alexis Cheshire (Hurlingham Club), John Harris (GT), Randy Russell (Red Hat), Isaac Wong (Cockroach Labs), James Footman (HashiCorp) ## 📝 Summary: The article outlines a practical playbook for engineering leaders to spot and close capability gaps amid rapid tech change and sustained talent shortages. It defines capability as more than skills—emphasizing outcomes and execution—then walks through a gap analysis lifecycle: aligning with strategy, mapping current vs. required capabilities, prioritizing, and closing gaps via internal development, external hiring, or contractors. It highlights product-roadmap-driven planning, bi-annual enterprise planning, and the role of HR and recruiters in broadening talent pools, reducing bias, and negotiating fair offers. It also warns about over-reliance on informal networks and advocates for equitable, value-based offers and long-term retention thinking. ## 📖 Main Content: ### 🔎 Overview & Context (#overview-context) - Demand for tech talent is projected to outstrip supply until at least 2026; shortages are critical in data science, software engineering, and security. - Rapid shifts (AI/ML, cloud, Kubernetes) require new mental models, not just new tools. - Continuous capability gap analysis is essential, not episodic. ### 🧭 What Is a “Capability”? (#what-is-capability) - A capability is broader than a skill: it’s the ability to execute and achieve outcomes, individually and collectively. - Implication: Capability planning must consider process, team composition, tooling, and cross-functional alignment, not just headcount. ### 🧰 How to Identify Gaps (#identify-gaps) - Use free gap-analysis templates: define current capabilities, define target state, and map the delta. - Periodically reassess; capabilities can become redundant or irrelevant and should be retired. - Reverse Conway’s law approach: define desired future outcomes, then work backward to the org and skills needed. ### 🧱 Where to Start: Strategy First (#strategy-first) - Clarity on long-term org strategy and vision is foundational; shorter-term product vision guides immediate capability needs. - Alexis Cheshire: begin with cyber risk assessments to surface process, structure, and work quality issues; quantify business impact to set recovery objectives. - John Harris: keep a pulse on industry trends via communities, advisory boards, and events. ### 🧪 Planning Approaches & Examples (#planning-approaches) - Randy Russell: AI/ML/data science change problem framing; treat them as different cognitive paradigms. - Product discipline approach: fix release milestones, work backward to define skills/capabilities and build the bench accordingly. - Isaac Wong’s enterprise approach: bi-annual planning; product teams prioritize problems, co-create execution plans with engineering, identify work/dependencies/capabilities, and resource to close gaps. - Example: Cloud migrations demand rethinking developer/operations skills around cloud platforms and Kubernetes. ### 🧩 Fill Gaps: Build, Buy, or Borrow (#fill-gaps) - Decision criteria: - Internal development (promote/upskill) for culture continuity and long-term needs. - Contractors for short, specialized bursts (e.g., DB tuning, computer vision for QC systems). - Permanent hires for durable, strategic capabilities. - Portfolio mindset: match time horizons to capability durability and business value. ### 🌐 Networks: Pros and Cons (#networks) - Informal networks accelerate learning and hiring; “pay it forward.” - Risk: over-reliance can reduce diversity and limit access to new competencies; diversify sourcing when building new capability areas. ### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Working with Recruiters (#recruiters) - For scarce roles, high-quality recruiters/headhunters extend reach and save time. - They act as “windows to the market,” speaking with many professionals and surfacing calibrated candidates. ### 🏢 HR’s Role (#hr-role) - HR identifies internal/external candidates, checks org fit, and improves retention. - Vital for mitigating unconscious bias (functional and demographic). - For smaller orgs, strong recruiting partners or HR consultancies can cover legal/compliance, freeing leaders to focus on culture. ### 🤝 Offers & Negotiations (#offers) - HR or trusted recruiters help structure and communicate fair offers and close successfully. - Offer the role’s true market value regardless of gender, ethnicity, or current salary; evaluate against original job requirements. - Balance compensation with benefits, flexibility, growth, and motivation alignment; if it’s only about money, it may be a poor fit. ### 🔁 What Next? (#what-next) - Capability gap analysis is a core leadership discipline for startups and enterprises alike. - The craft is in objective-setting, honest assessment of current state, and building a realistic, resourced plan with partners. ### 🗒️ Notes - Capability definition: - Outcome-oriented; includes execution, not just individual skills. - Requires continuous reevaluation; retire outdated capabilities. - Gap analysis process: - Current state → target state → prioritized deltas → close plan → review cadence. - Use reverse Conway’s law for future-back planning. - Strategy alignment: - Long-term vision from execs; short-term from product teams/managers. - Start with cyber risk to quantify business stakes and resilience targets. - Planning modalities: - Product-roadmap backplanning to establish capability timelines. - Bi-annual enterprise planning; document dependencies and required capabilities. - Sourcing strategy: - Internal upskilling for culture and collaboration continuity. - Contractors for short, narrow, high-skill bursts. - Permanent hires for strategic, durable needs; think in portfolio time horizons. - Networks & bias: - Leverage networks but avoid homogeneity traps; broaden sourcing for new domains. - HR mitigates bias, ensures functional breadth in hiring. - Recruiters: - Extend market reach; accelerate hard searches; calibrate offers and expectations. - Offers: - Pay for the role, not demographics or prior pay; integrate non-monetary drivers. - Over-index on long-term fit and retention levers (flexibility, growth). - Leadership skill: - Balance technical depth, people management, and partner orchestration. ## 📖 References: - LeadDev: How to Spot and Close Capability Gaps (Joe Fay) - Industry mentions within article: Gartner (skills shortage), experts from Red Hat, GT, Cockroach Labs, HashiCorp ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: 1) Original idea: “A capability should be thought of as more than just an individual or team skill. It also implies the ability to execute and achieve an outcome, both collectively and individually.” - Paraphrase: Treat capability as an outcome engine, not a skills list. It encompasses people and processes working together to deliver results, not just isolated expertise. 2) Original idea: “Offers should be in line with the team a candidate is potentially joining. ‘Always offer what the role is worth, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, or current salary,’ … ‘If the discussion becomes just about money, you may well not have the right fit.’” - Paraphra - Summary: Identifying and filling capability gaps in engineering teams is increasingly challenging due to the current hiring climate and rapid technological advancements. It is crucial for engineering leaders to constantly assess their team's capabilities and plan for the future. Research firm Gartner predicts a tech talent shortage until at least 2026, particularly in areas such as data science and cybersecurity. To identify capability gaps, leaders can use free templates and tools to analyze their organization's current and desired capabilities. Once gaps are identified, leaders need to devise a plan to close them, which can involve developing internal talent or recruiting externally. Informal networks and recruiters can be valuable resources in finding the right talent. Human resources play a crucial role in identifying and retaining skilled candidates, controlling biases, and negotiating offers. Capability gap analysis requires a combination of technical knowledge, effective people management, and collaboration with p... - URL: https://leaddev.com/team/how-spot-and-close-capability-gaps  You have **0** further articles remaining this month. [Join LeadDev.com for free](https://leaddev.com/register?s=dw) to read unlimited articles. Putting together the right engineering team is difficult, but with the current hiring climate, it’s harder than ever to identify and fill capability gaps. June 26 & 29, 2023 In-person workshops  ##### Get a day of training from industry leaders with our workshops Choose from five leadership workshops and get a full day of in-depth, practical sessions on effective management led by highly experienced tutors. It’s hard enough to put together an engineering team to tackle the upcoming sprint. But rapidly evolving technology, [developments in generative AI](https://leaddev.com/tech/7-generative-ai-productivity-hacks-developers), changing organizational objectives, and a shifting skills landscape, means engineering leaders must constantly ask themselves if they have the right set of capabilities on hand, not just for now, but looking into an uncertain future. It doesn’t help that demand for tech talent is set to outstrip supply [until at least 2026](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-04-06-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-it-spending-to-grow-5-percent-in-2023), according to research firm Gartner, with the IT skills shortage reaching [“critical”](https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-07-do-recent-layoffs-mean-the-tech-talent-crunch-is-over) levels, particularly in key areas such as data science, software engineering, and cybersecurity. [The recent wave of tech layoffs](https://leaddev.com/career-paths-progression-promotion/how-survive-tech-layoffs-storm) is unlikely to make life easier for engineering managers. This is why staying ahead of the problem by constantly identifying and filling capability gaps is essential. #### How to identify capability gaps in your team A capability should be thought of as more than just an individual or team skill. It also implies the ability to execute and achieve an outcome, both collectively and individually. There are multiple free [templates](https://ludicconsulting.com/news/capability-gap-analysis-template) and [tools](https://www.cascade.app/resources/capability-gap-analysis-template) available to help leaders carry out a capability gap analysis for their organization. These hinge on establishing an organization’s current capabilities, identifying where it is they want to get to, and the capabilities this will require. Leaders must then devise a plan to close the gaps. This can include dropping redundant or irrelevant capabilities. A good capability gap analysis should be evaluated over time, to ensure it stays up to date. A more informal take on the process could be described as a [“reverse Conway’s law”](https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-gb/radar/techniques/inverse-conway-maneuver), whereby an engineering leader establishes the skills or capabilities needed to deliver a future product or achieve an outcome and works backward toward their current organization. #### Where to start The first step towards identifying capability gaps is to be [clear about your organization’s overall strategy and vision](https://leaddev.com/technical-direction-strategy/setting-vision-mission-and-strategy-your-team). Ultimately, that long-term vision is the responsibility of the senior management team, while short-term vision can lie with individual product teams or product managers. Alexis Cheshire, IT director at the private Hurlingham Club in London says, “My eyes are open looking for gaps the moment I walk into an organization for an interview. Because I want to know if the problems are at least ones I can fix, or if it’s something a bit more fundamental.” Cheshire’s starting point is often a cyber risk assessment. “That gives me a view of process, structure, and quality of work. Then you start asking questions to the business about valuation. ‘Well, if your sales go down for an hour, how much is that going to cost?’ The recovery point objective needs to be less than that.” A tech leader also needs to have a grasp on where technology, in general, is going, says John Harris, CTO at GT, which provides off-shore product teams to high-growth companies. Tech leaders should be constantly tracking currents in the industry by learning from others, attending networking events, joining advisory boards, or simply reading around the topic. Randy Russell, director of certifications at Red Hat, says negotiating skills shortages and gaps is more difficult than ever as technology changes in leaps, not increments. “Things like AI, ML, and data science require an entirely different way of thinking about the problems an organization is trying to solve.” Harris says a shift towards product disciplines has helped change the way many organizations think about developing their capabilities. “You have a business product roadmap with the releases, you work back from those releases, etched in stone, make sure that everyone around the room is contributing to them. Then you build your skills base accordingly.” Cockroach Labs’ vice president of engineering, Isaac Wong, outlines a more formal enterprise-wide approach. His organization has a bi-annual planning process aimed at identifying which skills the team is missing. Product teams identify and prioritize the most pressing problems to solve, and then work with the engineering teams to build out high-level execution plans to solve them. “Those plans identify work, dependencies, and other capabilities that are required. This is placed in a document and any required resources, people, or capabilities are reviewed and a plan is made to resolve those gaps.” For example, if an organization is shifting applications to the cloud, how do they rethink their developer and operations skills, especially around the major cloud platform vendors and popular tools like [Kubernetes](https://leaddev.com/tech/kubernetes-engineering-managers)? #### Filling gaps from within or externally? Once you’ve identified your capability gaps, you then need to establish the best way to fill them. Does it make sense to [promote or upskill internally, or recruit externally](https://leaddev.com/hiring-onboarding-retention/how-hire-engineering-manager-within-or-without)? A particular skills gap might not automatically equate to a permanent role if the need is short term. A big data project might need short-term help around database tuning, for example, so it might make more sense to turn to a contractor. Likewise, developing a quality control system could require a computer vision expert, but it might not be needed once the system is operational. As Cheshire asks, “Is that a tactical short-term contract gap? Or is it a permanent role I want to bring in and maybe develop to fill the gap over the next 12 months? It's almost like an investment portfolio with different time horizons.” For Wong, it makes sense to develop internal talent as far as possible. “Existing employees have the culture, collaboration, and social skills we are looking for,” he says. #### Network effects When it comes to recruiting or finding contractors, informal networks can play a huge role. “The network is your way of learning and helping one another. Pay it forward, wherever you can,” says Harris. At the same time, managers should be mindful of the potential pitfalls of informal networks. Wong says they can be great for areas that are already a core competency for you, but new competencies might require a broader outlook. “There is a risk that an over-reliance on informal networks and personal recommendations reduces diversity,” he says. #### Should you use recruiters? That need to take a broader look is where good recruiters can be invaluable in helping manage capability gaps. For the toughest-to-fill roles, recruiters and reputable head-hunters can be worth every penny, both in terms of broadening your talent pool and saving you a lot of time. “They have incredible networks. They all have the skills and techniques to find the right people quicker than you will yourself,” Harris says. HashiCorp’s manager for recruiting in EMEA, James Footman, sees recruiters as the “windows to the market, they’re speaking to hundreds of professionals every week”. #### What HR can do for you It can be all too easy to forget the role of human resources (HR). The HR department can play a valuable role not just in identifying skilled internal and external candidates, but in ensuring they are a good fit with the organization as a whole and that they stay with you for the long term. “The focus on HR for us is making sure that our top talents that are working with our client teams are happy and have what they need,” says Harris. HR can also play a critical role in controlling unconscious biases, whether in terms of experience, or diversity characteristics like gender or ethnicity. “Database engineers may be really good at hiring database engineers, but not so good at hiring front-end engineers,” Wong says. Smaller organizations are less likely to have access to in-house HR resources. However, Harris points out, a good recruiter or partner agency can help plug the gap, and depending on the depth of the relationship, should have a good understanding of your company culture. Standalone HR consultancies can also relieve tech leaders of legal and compliance headaches, which will free them up to focus on culture and other softer issues. #### Cards on the table HR can play an important role when it comes to negotiating and communicating an offer when you’ve found the right person, whether that’s an internal or external hire. Where an organization doesn’t have an internal HR team, a trusted recruiter should have an in-depth understanding of what makes a good offer for a given role, and be able to communicate it effectively. It’s in their interest to ensure negotiations reach a successful conclusion. Offers should be in line with the team a candidate is potentially joining. “Always offer what the role is worth, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, or current salary,” says Footman. “If the individual has passed the interview stages, offer fairly based on the original job requirements.” Any offer should balance compensation with other benefits, and neither should be overlooked. This includes considering individuals’ motivation for moving, as well as benefits such as flexible working, and career progression. This should help you fill a capability gap for the long term. If the discussion becomes just about money, “you may well not have the right fit,” Harris says. #### What next? Whether we’re talking about established organizations with hundreds of engineers, or a startup with a handful of developers, capability gap analysis is an essential part of the tech leader’s toolkit. The process, along with the templates and plans available online, might appear relatively straightforward, but the real skill comes with an engineering leader’s ability to identify the objective, recognize the current state of their team, and work out a strategy to plug the gap between them. This involves a balance of technical knowledge, skillful people management, and the ability to work with trusted partners., How to Spot and Close Capability Gaps, Joe Fay, 01h57rp481wcwx3ycfb0wze1x2.