IT professional of the future: an all-rounder

BANGALORE: While achieving domain expertise is the mantra that successful IT professionals boast of, in future, the trend in 2010 points to multi-domain expertise, according to a Gartner report. This report released in September 2005, talks about the future outlook for the IT professional. Besides technical aptitude, IT professionals need to understand business realities - industry, core processes, customer bases, regulatory environment, culture and constraints.

“By 2011, around 70 percent of leading-edge companies will seek and develop versatilists while de-emphasizing specialists,” the report reads. Gartner defines the versatilist as an IT professional whose numerous roles, assignments and experiences enable him or her to synthesize knowledge and context in ways that fuel business value. Compared to specialists or generalists, the report says, versatilists can apply their depth of skill to a rich scope of situations and experiences, nuild new alliances and competencies.

The study projects that by 2010, the IT profession will be split into four domains of expertise: technology infrastructure and services, information design and management, process design and management and relationship and relationship and sourcing management.

“Increasingly, successful IT professionals will identify themselves not just by occupation but also by the industry, process and change programs in which they participate,” says the report. IT professionals would also be expected to demonstrate versatility, initiative and business knowledge.

The report predicts that four “megaforces” will change the landscape for IT professionals. These include global sourcing, IT automation, growth of consumer IT and business reconfiguration. Global sourcing would lead to increased competition among IT professionals across different markets, says the report.

On IT automation, Gartner feels that IT operations like software development, testing, remote system monitoring, operation centers, technical support, storage and networking would be automated. Global market trends such as consolidation, outsourcing, reengineering, globalization and mergers and acquisitions are expected to affect IT employees because of disruption of roles, relationships and performance.