17 February 2014

3 career options if you work in a traditional IT department


IT departments are under pressure from two sides. On the supply side from multiple external service providers that are encroaching into the IT departments’ space and eroding jobs. And on the demand side from the business that is claiming a more dominant role and is engaging external service providers directly, but that at the same time is struggling with their new responsibilities. No, you weren’t expecting this and no, you probably don’t welcome it. But it’s happened and it’s called progress. If you work in an IT department, you have three main options.
  • If you want to continue doing IT service management as you always have done, go work for an external services provider.
  • If you have feel for logistics and retail, stay in the IT department and develop the competences that will help the IT department fulfill an ‘IT Retail’ function. With increasing technological standardization, ‘IT Manufacturing’ has moved from the IT department to the external service providers.
  • If you understand the business and get along well with business people (or ‘normal people’ as my wife likes to call them), jump the fence and move across to the business, where business and IT are morphing into a new function.
Things will change, they might just change without you. So go reinvent yourself.

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