Five Predictions

Since the economic slump that began seven years ago your organizations have rolled out more and more projects with fewer and fewer people in shorter and shorter time cycles.

These past years have also been those in which the Cloud, Mobility, Analytics have become more important parts of your business-technology roadmap. Across all of which our research has shown consistent gaps relating to governance models, architecture and most critically, skills.

Filling these skill gaps fast enough has become a touchstone to whether business transformation is going to happen or not. A CIO at a software services outfit only takes on projects now, that can be delivered in 60-days. And, it’s clear that he isn’t looking at talent only within the perimeter.

Many CIOs also need to deal with legacy apps and infrastructure. That’s where the internal talent pool seems focused. When an automotive giant wanted to rapidly leverage the cloud, the CIO recently chose to deploy trainee engineers rather than involve the existing team.

Apart from emerging technologies, speed and attitude, there’s a fourth trend of simply not recruiting rookies or not replacing those that leave.

In this era of third-party IT delivery (the public cloud or managed services or strategic sourcing), I wonder how many enterprises any longer manage their own infra or write their own code? A year back I could still spot IT departments that attempted to build mobile apps on their ownsome, today it’s a rare CIO who goes down that path.

I see significant shifts in IT department dynamics over the next two years:

IT teams will shrink, to just the CIO and a bunch of direct reports;Multi-layered teams will exist only to service the legacy app and infra stacks;CIOs will need business credibility not tech savviness to prosper;CIOs will be more dependent on their direct reports than ever before; and,Direct reports will transform into relationship managers—with lines of business as well as with third-party IT providers 

This is not a dystopian vision. This, is what will make IT an embedded part of an organization’s business DNA. That is a good thing.

What do you feel?