Driving to IT Excellence Through Human Resources
Mon Jun 23, 2003 - Tue Jun 24, 2003
Cost pressures continue to create challenges for IT and IT HR managers. After several years of heavy cuts, most companies seem to expect only small changes in IT budgets and staffing going forward, yet demands on IT continue to increase. At the joint meeting of members of the IT Management Program and IT Human Resources Program, attendees discussed the implications of continuing cost pressures for internal organization structures, external relationships, and people.
Centralization
A pre-meeting survey suggested that most attendees - IT organizations fall into one of two groups -
those who are already highly centralized and those who are headed in that direction. Approaches to
centralization varied widely, however, according to each organization's own particular situation. Models
discussed ranged from clean-sheet organization redesign to more incremental, federal approaches
designed to foster greater collaboration among autonomous departments.
Sourcing Strategies
In the survey results and meeting discussion, members seemed eager to explore new approaches to
sourcing. Reasons for this interest ranged from a desire to reduce costs to more long-term plans to
focus internal staff on strategic tasks and move nonstrategic skills out of the organization. One
member presentation described an aggressive effort to create a variable cost virtual bench of external
technical resources, using a third-party vendor management solution. Offshore development and
support models generated a great deal of debate, led by four member companies who presented case
studies of their experiences with India-based development partners.
Workforce Planning
The personnel implications of centralization and a growing reliance on external resources spurred
some of the most vigorous discussion of the meeting. While more traditional technical skills are
becoming more commoditized (and, in some cases, being aggressively outsourced), members reported
that business process knowledge, project management skills, and architecture expertise remain in
high demand. Transitioning current employees to these more strategic roles and building sustainable
career paths for the new organization remain key challenges without any "silver bullet" solutions in
sight.
For further details about this meeting, see the full Meeting Summary referenced below or select from the menu at right.
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