Tech leaders benefit Aust businesses: Insight

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Tech leaders benefit Aust businesses

By Vivienne Fisher, ZDNet Australia
October 15, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/soa/Tech-leaders-benefit-Aust-businesses/0,139023731,120269081,00.htm

Australian companies benefit from having CIOs and IT managers with a technical bent, with industry peers arguing that experience is key.

Reports about techniques for managing staff, and dealing with idle gossip have been popular with IT managers wanting to skill up on how they relate to their staff.

But technical skills are still highly important, according to respondents to a recent IT manager poll.

"Adequate knowledge and hands on experience with core skills required by staff keeps managers in touch and in focus," said one respondent. "I think a company would be better off recruiting multi-talented tech staff with obvious management potential, and desire to learn through all core processes of the IT department."

Infrastructure hardware, software programming, Web deployment and support were all skills this respondent thought would aid managers when implementing business plan strategies. "Strategy is important--though the reality check of experience makes the difference between what's required and what's possible," he said.

Martin Read, a director at professional services firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, believes whether or not IT managers need a technical background is an interesting question.

"If we define the role of an IT manager, it has changed drastically since the advent of the Internet and the opening up of the organisation to the outside world," Read said.

According to Read, while in the past the realm of the IT manager was to select and maintain base infrastructure for internal applications, the job is no longer that simple.

"'How do we interoperate with the outside world?" is a growing concern, and the advent of Web services, if nothing else, serves to raise awareness of a potential need to become even more connected just to remain competitive," argued Read.

"Ten years ago technical background was much more important than it is today," he said. "Understanding and grasping technology is enough, as long as your IT manager has a strategic head on his shoulders."

Reporting and informal discussion, were other methods respondents to the IT Manager poll cited as ways they stayed in touch with the day-to-day issues facing their IT departments.