Business Skills for the IT Workers
October 23, 2007 by Raj Sheelvant
Society for Information Management Survey this year for the first time in 10 years has identified that CIOs now rank people issue as their #1 concern. In this global labor movement it’s interesting to note that retaining and managing talent is becoming the top priority of organizations.
The reason according to the survey is “Due to the increase in global outsourcing, baby-boomer retirements, and low enrollments in IT programs at both U.S. and European universities, the skills that providers are requiring of employees are significantly changing”. What it means that the ‘hard’ IT skills though widely available due to globalization, is not enough anymore.
IT executives are starting to see a looming shortage of people with the mix of tech and business skills they’ll need.
At the same time ‘Hard’ IT skill by itself will not be a differentiator because of globalization of labor. The role of IT has also evolved from mundane automation in the 1990s to enabling the business to sustain competitive advantage. If the IT project is not critical to the company’s core competency, it will get outsourced. With maturing SaaS model, I personally believe the organizations will get very comfortable in using ‘On Demand’ delivery model for non core IT activities. With these emerging new realities, IT workers especially in the developed countries when they compete with other IT workers around the globe need to move up the value chain quickly. ‘Soft’ skills like good communication skill, collaboration skills etc. are beginning to gain importance.
The sad part is, because of cost cutting, the organizations are not willing to invest in their workers to acquire those ’soft’ skill. The IT workers need to be proactive and acquire those skills themselves.
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