The industry skills council, e-Skills UK, has published a report called IT Insight: Trends and UK Skills Implications with the aid of analyst house Gartner. Much of the story has been heard before -- a skills shortage in the UK and the need for combined technical and business skills figure prominently. But the implication these are new issues is counterproductive.
The link between business and IT has always been complex. Reports like this commonly imply building systems used to be the preserve of technicians, apparently acting autonomously. Yet are we really to believe that, say, cheque clearing systems were built entirely by IT people, without any consultation with the management of banks?
Indeed, much of what counts as banking is largely defined by IT systems. Cheque clearing is conceptually simple. Over a period of years, though, banks have evolved a range of ever more complex financial products. Often, these are the work of mathematicians, economists and computer experts -- technicians every one.
Clearly there are other aspects, such as commercial viability, sales and marketing, risk management and so on. All the same, in a number of respects, IT has created business possibilities, not merely reflected them.
A more accurate characterisation of the situation is that the processes that are built into new systems are becoming harder to understand. Basic money transactions are at the core of banking, but their mechanisms are relatively easy to understand for both IT and commercial people. The problems being tackled nowadays are harder for everyone to understand.
In fact, although the complaint is often made that IT people fail to understand business can frequently be turned round. The problem is often that business people also fail to understand business, as well as lacking insight into IT.
Another theme that constantly re-emerges is that IT skills are linked to business success. This also mis-describes an important issue. Research long ago concluded that although successful companies spend more on IT, it was impossible to show the success was a result of deploying IT. On the contrary, it is believed that it is a consequence of more general success.
Where the report does strike a chord is in its emphasis on the need for appropriate skills in the vast army of users. Again, this was long ago established as a critical factor. For example, major airlines concluded it was not the possession of uniquely sophisticated reservation systems that gave them an advantage, it was the skill of staff that used them. Hence owners of systems were quite prepared to rent out their use to other airlines.
But this kind of skill is too easily overlooked in general reports, which tend to focus on more basic abilities. No doubt with the ubiquity of computers, it is as well for much of the work force to be able to find the keys on a keyboard and to know that to shut down a Windows system, you press the Start button. But it is the more advanced and less easily taught skills that really make a difference.
Outsourcing inevitably comes into the picture. An interesting problem is that if more junior tasks are outsourced, it becomes much harder to create a training route to advanced skills. Although a reader was right to chide me for failing to mention cost advantage as a driver for outsourcing in a recent column, that is surely a short term and relatively minor consideration.
Simply finding needed advanced skills by outsourcing is a much more strategic consideration. But the scope for both this and cost leverage may well be limited. There are already signs that two factors are working against both. Individuals with good specialist skills are emigrating from low to high wage countries for obvious reasons. At the same time, the countries best endowed with skilled people are themselves showing signs of rapid economic growth and the increasing need to deploy those skills for their own use.
Maybe we could do better in all these areas if we were more thorough in our analysis of the problems. Simple answers to complex questions rarely work.
biography
Martin Brampton is founder of Black Sheep Research, an independent consultancy providing research, writing and speaking services on a wide range of business and technology issues. Brampton was previously a director at Bloor Research, and has worked with IT as a user and analyst for over 20 years. He is a long-term contributor to silicon.com through videoed debates and his weekly column, which tackles a wide range of issues. He can be contacted through his Web site. This article first appeared on silicon.com.
8%
1%
I am an IT project manager that spends about 50% of my time in each camp. I can tell you right now that 99% of the problems I face are on the business side! IT (generally) have clearly defined procedures and processes in place to ensure that the right work gets done, and the problems get solved, even if they follow a JIT (just in time) methodology.
In trying to get a system built, it is always the same story:
0 No clear idea of how it works now
1 No clear idea of how they want it to work
2 Constantly moving goal posts
3 If you have more than one person doing the EXACT same job, they want the system to accommodate the way that EACH of them likes to work, rather than defining one process and making them follow it (which is a good idea for a number of reasons, including being able to continue that persons work when they are on leave)
4 No ability to pull staff off current duties to fill out detail
5 0 (zero) testing until AFTER the thing launches, regardless of how much you beg them
6 Picked-out-of-thin-air ‘Must Have By’ delivery date
Just my opinion.