Personal KM reading:“The Information Technology Workforce: Trends and Implications 2005-2008” (MIS Quarterly Executive, 2006, 5(2))

The article “The Information Technology Workforce: Trends and Implications 2005-2008” (MIS Quarterly Executive, 2006, 5(2)) is an empirical research conducted between May and October 2005. The research was a response to the changing requirements of IT workforce (in the face of global IT sourcing, baby-boomer retirements and etc) and meant to address the concern of potential mismatch between the academic supply of IT skills and the demand of business executives.

This empirical research sponsored by Society for Information Management (SIM) focused on the current and future needs for IT skills in IT departments of various organizations from a broad spectrum of industries. Half of the organizations participated in this research were in the Fortune 500, the other half of the organizations are made up evenly by large organizations and the Small and medium-size enterprises.

The key findings of this research are:
Most IT departments will increase staff level by 2008;
The skills required by organizations will be a mix of technical, project management and business skills;
External sourcing, especially offshore staff employed by domestic third party providers will increase by 2008;
Organizations use domestic third party providers to obtain technical skills which are mainly related to application and back office operation;
Organizations value IT workers with industry and business knowledge and who can solve business problems; technical foundation and communication skills are still important for entry-level IT workers.

This research also drew a list of implications for the future IT workers and their career paths; these implications may also be valuable to academics as they design and implement educational programs for the skill development of future IT workers. These implications include:

IT professionals will have more experiences with third party providers;
As outsourcing of entry level IT work increases, organizations may need to find new approaches to developing the combination of IT, project management and business skills; it may be easier for internal employees with business skills to pick up IT knowledge than the other way around;
Some organizations continue to depend on mainframes for their businesses, future IT workers may still need to develop mainframe skills; regarding mainframe technology, academics and the organizations may need to join force to create solutions for the future.
More alignment between IT education providers and the business world are needed to define how, when and where future IT professional will develop the range of skills required by organizations, especially business and project management skills.

This article highlighted the needs of adjustment for personal knowledge strategy of knowledge workers. It emphasized that personal knowledge management and personal career development plan need to be constantly adjusted to respond to the changing business requirements. The acquisition, development and measurements of personal knowledge and experiences need to start from an appropriate identification of knowledge and skill requirements, which are often from the business of the industry and influenced by changing economic factors. The future knowledge workers, including IT professionals, needs to establish their personal knowledge goals and strategies and also revisit and adjust them according to the change of business requirements in their industry.