You have probably heard the joke of the person who didn't have enough of a personality to be an accountant so s/he became an economist...or...information technology (IT) financial systems programmer.
Well, it wasn't a joke.
Many of those people were fired as the new millennium IT hiring fizzled and, to cut costs and do more with less, information technology work was outsourced.
Now, after technology boosted productivity, cut costs and IT services became an easily outsourced commodity, internal IT staffs are being reincarnated to business-savvy technology professionals who can meet growing demands of the business for innovation.
New IT hires are as likely to be brought over from the business side as they are to have been groomed in IT. The preferred educational background for IT employees today is more often an MBA than a computer science degree. According to Gartner's 2005 report on the IT professional outlook, six out of ten IT employees will assume business-facing roles by 2010.
Three roles in particular have emerged as critical: the project manager, the relationship manager and the business analyst. IT and business are very dependent on each other and need to work more closely than ever before. "The big picture is that IT here---and perhaps everywhere---has become ever more integrated into all aspects of the business," says Judy Stahl, CIO at Harvard Business School.
Source: CIO, www.cio.com December 15, 2005