People working for IT services companies are to get their own forum
for meetings and online discussion of issues such as personal
skills and staff retention, following preliminary talks between
leading industry bodies and companies, writes John Kavanagh.
The initial meeting, held this month, brought together the BCS,
the National Computing Centre and companies including ICL, its
KnowledgePool training subsidiary, Sun Microsystems and research
specialist IDC. The meeting was organised by KnowledgePool manager
David Brain, but those attending felt a likely ultimate outcome
could be the formation of a BCS specialist group to give a formal
focus point.
Almost 50% of IT staff now work for services companies, ranging
from consultancies to software developers, facilities management
specialists and companies in the re-emerging computer bureau
business.
"There has been very rapid growth in the services sector as the
IT industry has matured, and the sector has special
characteristics," says BCS deputy chief executive Colin Thompson,
who was at the meeting. "For example, it is customer-facing and
fee-earning, and much of the service takes place on client
premises.
"It covers things like project management, strategic technical
consulting, bespoke applications development, systems
implementation and services management.
"However, many of the needs of people in this field are not
catered for by existing professional networking groups, which tend
to focus on more traditional and technical aspects of IT. As the
sector becomes even more important, there is a need for specialist
networks for the people who work in it."
Several topics emerged for discussion at future meetings of the
forum or online. These include retaining staff, especially those in
Web development, knowledge management and managing teams of
consultants and technical specialists.
"Another topic was what it means to be a successful services
manager - the skills, tricks of the trade and toolkits," says
Thompson. "Are people made or can they be trained to be successful
here?"
He says the group might help define new role descriptions in IT
services that could be added to the BCS Industry Structure Model,
which describes different IT roles and lays out the suggested
tasks, education, qualifications and experience at different
levels.
Those who attended the meeting suggest that the new group might
meet four times a year, with an electronic forum being considered
for discussions between meetings.
The group is already opening up to anyone in the IT services
sector for a meeting on staff retention, to be hosted by Sun
Microsystems in October. The contact is david.brain@knowledgepool.com.