From the earliest days of IT, there has been an inexorable trend to reduce cost and increase flexibility. It manifests itself in three ways: consolidation, standardization and commoditization.
Consolidation eliminates needless replication, and standardization eliminates needless diversity. Both reduce costs and increase flexibility.
More importantly, both ultimately lead to commoditization, as vendors reap the economic benefits of larger markets and users conclude that the benefits of buying faster, cheaper and more reliable “black boxes” off the shelf outweigh whatever benefits they might obtain by customizing their own components.
This trend has several implications for the skills, knowledge and experience IT practitioners need to be successful. In the lower layers of the IT department, the most valuable skills will be those that address the need for cross-enterprise integration with multiple solutions. But the most valuable IT staff will be those who are most comfortable working closely with the business side.
What does this mean for how we define competence as an IT practitioner in today’s business environment, and how can an organization be sure someone has that competence?
Practice, continuing professional development and certification are the cornerstones of acquiring, maintaining and confirming competence. In particular, new certification methods are necessary to effectively demonstrate these new kinds of competencies.
