07 Feb 2008
The supply of IT skills is failing to meet the demand for properly qualified professionals in the field, according to new research from analyst Gartner.
The study suggests that traditional technology skills will no longer suit the market’s needs.
“This is a massive and devastating skills shortage, and it is coming when there is a surge in the number of projects that are required from IT,” said Gartner vice president Andy Kyte.
“I keep meeting CIOs who say they will be running resource-constrained projects in 2008,” he said.
“But the constraint is not from the budget but from the lack of the right people.”
According to the Gartner report, companies should explore alternative ways of delivering IT services and keep monitoring markets to spot emerging threats.
And employers are increasingly demanding professionals able to drive business growth through the use of technology.
“What constitutes ‘qualified people’ will change,” said Gartner vice president Diane Morello.
“The intersection of business models and IT requires people with varied experience, professional versatility, multidiscipline knowledge and technology understanding – a hybrid professional, in other words,” she said.
Managers talk deadlines (as in time remaining); IT staff talk milestones (as in modules completed). Unless, and until, managers start thinking in terms of modules completed and IT staff start thinking in terms of time remaining, the problem of business-skilled IT workers / IT-skilled business workers is simply not going to go away - and for that to happen, business workers (especially business managers) are really going to need to know much more about IT and IT workers (especially IT managers) about management. How many managers today (and not just in IT) are qualified in both business administration and IT?
Posted by: Gordon Docherty 08 Feb 2008
I have both IT/technical (B.Sc. M.Sc.) and business (MBA) qualifications and experience, yet find when looking for work that you can only ever be "technical" or "business" but not both. Isn't it about time that companies started waking up to the fact that the reason they don't have staff skilled in both IT and business is that there is just no interest from within the respective (entrenched) camps within those companies to disturb their very comfortable status quo? After all, what has IT to do with the business, and what does the business know about IT?
Posted by: Anonymous 08 Feb 2008
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