A Society for Information Management study examining IT workforce trends revealed, among other things, that companies plan to shift more jobs to outsourcers and, for in-house staff, put a higher priority on business knowledge.
IT workforces, in general, are relatively stable, the study showed. About three-quarters of the 89 companies surveyed had 10% or less turnover and 90%-plus expecting less than 10% to retire by 2008.
While the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) IT jobs will remain flat from 2005 to 2008, the mix is expected to change, with in-house FTEs declining by 8% and FTEs provided by third parties growing by 44%.
As such, SIM wanted to find out what skills were more likely to be kept in-house vs. jobbed out. “Overall, the data paints a picture of IT managers building an organization of IT professionals who know the industry and business, and who can work well with clients and colleagues,” SIM said.
The top skills critical to keep in-house in 2005 were: project planning/budgeting/scheduling; function/process knowledge; company knowledge; business process design/reengineering; systems analysis; industry knowledge; project leadership; project risk management; systems design; and change management.
Other than systems analysis and design, there is a marked absence of technology skills listed. “Our analysis indicates that the balance has shifted toward even greater importance of business and management skills,” SIM said, “especially those related specifically to an organization, its industry sector, and the design of its business and functional processes.”
Asked to identify the lowest-ranked skills critical to keep in-house, participants identified: system testing; data warehousing; knowledge of the Capability Maturity Model; continuity/recovery; operations; operating systems; voice/data telecom; support/help desk; mainframe/legacy; and server hosting.
The list of skills that are most often provided by third parties today included programming, systems testing, database design/management and support/help desk.
The overall picture won’t change much by 2008. Skills expected to become automated or outsourced map closely to skills currently ranked the lowest or already outsourced. And the skills critical to keep in-house are expected to be virtually the same as today, except user relationship management will replace change management.
But SIM also identified three new skills as emerging in importance: IT governance; managing third-party providers; and leading sourcing strategy.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise given the increased reliance on outside help.
