The IT profession remains in a state of immaturity and
is probably in the same state today that civil engineering was at
the time of the Tay Bridge disaster, according to a BCS Thought
Leadership Debate at London's Royal Society.
The debate heard that the IT profession has too much empiricism
and too little rigorous analysis.
Too often technology drives the direction of a business and not
the other way around. The gap between business and technical
feasibility is often huge and seldom recognised.
The debate heard that chief executives and CIOs need to become
leaders of change. Problems can be attributed to organisations
having overlapping attempts at change, where change management is
brought in as an afterthought. IT change often involves several
directors, with their own aims, pulling in different directions.
Directors need to promote a culture of shared judgement, and need
to know when to intervene.
Chief executives should endeavour to upgrade the skills of all
members of the board. All should be IT literate. Equally, it would
be advisable to hire a "hybrid professional" as the CIO, who should
be at least as skilled and experienced in management and driving
business change as they are in IT.
Chief executives should also set up an office of change
management to co-ordinate activities across the organisation,
programme managing all the various threads of business process
change. Additionally, they need to demonstrate positive support
toward their IT section and see them as an essential partner in
business change.
Most organisations are pulled apart from within over conflicts
of objectives, the debate heard. The business triangle of
time-cost-quality focuses too much on input, not output. Companies
rarely know how to produce large, complex projects that work
regularly. Improved professionalism would see this tendency
reversed.
Successful IT involves the co-ordinated participation of a wide
range of users, only a few of which could, realistically, be
defined as IT professionals.
One solution to this conundrum may be in the development of a
body of knowledge by a core professional group, with the acceptance
of the professional responsibility to promote best practice to the
wider community through voluntary standards.
Professionalism and good practice work best when moved across
from system to system, generation to generation. This is not
happening. The debate concluded that this has to change to prevent
the stagnation of the IT industry.
Action needed for future recruitment
The BCS Thought Leadership Debate discussed evidence that few
young people are considering IT as a field of study. It heard that
the industry needs to change this perception and attract young
people otherwise the future of the profession looks bleak.
The IT profession needs to be more visible, with strong role
models, to attain a higher standing in society and consequentially
become a more attractive option to potential students.
Unfortunately, once IT has recruited someone, it often treats
them poorly. The so-called feedstock, represented by IT
technicians, are seldom consulted and rarely respected, the debate
heard. There is an overwhelming lack of trust within business for
IT workers resulting in a culture of blame.
Who attends the debates?
The BCS Thought Leadership Debates invite up to 40 influential
people who are relevant to the particular subject under discussion,
and aim to have a mixture of delegates from different backgrounds
and organisations.