Technology, training, learning and development blogs

IT professionals are professional at last

One of the most interesting trends over the last few years has been the massive uptake of ‘professional skills’ training – on topics such as project management and service management.

For years, IT departments have had technology-dominated thinking. OK, you could credibly argue that this is a good thing – considering that they deal largely with technology! But recently, the technology itself isn’t taking centre stage – organisations are more interested (or, at the least, as interested) in how the technology is implemented and managed.

Organisations wanting some assurance of payback on that not inconsiderable IT budget are getting wise to the fact that new features can only take you so far – in fact, in some cases, they can make things worse. Why? Because there’s more to learn, more to go wrong, more to document, more to implement – and more to manage.

What organisations want is:

• to get more from what they already have.
• to be sure that new technologies are implemented within set timeframes and budgets – and deliver the expected business benefits.
• to have IT systems/departments which are as efficient as best-of-breed external providers.

So, we’ve seen the rise of methodologies for project management, such as PRINCE2, and frameworks for IT service management, such as ITIL. These don’t ‘require’ technology as such, but they complement whatever technology is already in place.

They’re both highly proven, which means that organisations don’t have to waste time coming up with their own processes for managing projects or supplying IT services – they can learn form the experience of experts and countless other organisations.

For IT departments and IT professionals, it means that alongside their technology skills they now have an obvious set of complementary skills to develop, which will be arguably of more long-term value to them and their organisations (mainly since technology churns every eighteen months or so, while these professional skills remain valid for longer).

This is resulting in a shift from the notion of the IT professional being a ‘computer geek’ to being a trusted professional, with the skills needed to design, implement and manage some of an organisation’s most important initiatives. This wider set of skills makes IT professionals more rounded in their approach to their roles and of greater value. In a word, it makes them more ‘professional’.

This change, from technology being the focus of IT investment, to how technology benefits an organisation and how it can be maximised is a welcome one. It will give IT professionals the status they deserve, give organisations more value from their IT teams – and ensure that IT becomes more akin to other organisational support functions such as accounts and marketing.