Focus on people training.....

Advice from Paul Coby speaking last week at the IT Forum EMEA. Paul, CIO at British Airways was speaking about the importance of people in large scale projects such at T5.

"When you launch a project of the scale of T5, focus on people training. Train everyone to where you think they should be then triple it."

He identifies the need for people to have the skills to pull off the projects and highlights the importance of embedding those skills.

The move towards "business technology" as opposed to Information Technology will require a shift in the skills but also the attitudes within IT departments and their staff. A move, that, if it is to be successful, will require a process that supports change as well as delivering training on new skills.

Much of the requirement will not be technical - it will require technical staff to think and act from a strongly business centered focus. Developing these skills will require more than a training course in communication.

The learning and change process will need to become part and parcel of the departmental culture, supporting individuals to adopt new methods and to deploy them successfully will require a blended approach to ensure success.

CIOs will need to become champions of change, be open to and willing to face the challenges of change and to gain buy-in and to support their teams. They will need effective and appropriate methods to develop those skills and implement then successfully.

In short, get the buy in, train them, triple it and then follow up and support the implementation process, evaluate and support at each stage, tackle blocks head on and celebrate success.

Building the IT department of the future will require commitment at all levels but the effort will ensure success and implementation in the long term.

Forget the credit crunch.....

IT is facing an equally worrying talent crunch over the next 3 years. A recent study sponsored by SAP has again identified the two trends of the moment in terms of IT Management:

• staff are getting harder to find and keep
• organisations are struggling to find the soft skills they require such as communication and managerial skills - rather than the technical skill sets.

This combined with an ongoing need to meet customer expectations and align IT strategy to business goals (as discussed here previously) demonstrates that departments must now focus on developing their existing talent for the future, and furnishing both the skills and the departmental culture for success.

A closer examination of the process of development can be found at http://www.optimiset-d.co.uk/resources/ .

Further details of the research are available at http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/06/03/230926/sap-warns-of-talent-crunch-in-three-years.htm