Information technology workforce skills: The software and IT services provider perspective

Abstract

It is now commonplace for an organization to turn to external firms for the provision of IT services and software. As technology advances and the business environment continues to evolve, a key challenge facing IT software and service providers is identifying critical skill sets, both today and in the future. The challenge is compounded as a result of the continuing growth of outsourcing and the increasing demand for technology solutions. This paper explores that challenge through a survey of IT software and service providers. We extend and complement previous studies of non-IT firms by comparing skills sought by non-IT organizations with those of IT services and software providers. Results indicate that, surprisingly, software and services providers place more emphasis on business domain and project management skills than on technical skills. This has implications for the hiring and retention practices of managers, and for academic curriculum and course offerings.Keywords IT . Workforce . Skills . Capabilities . Outsourcing . Software and service providers 1 Why study the information technology workforce?The business environment continues to evolve at a dizzying pace. Advances in technology, emergence of new business practices, and shifting social and geopolitical circumstances have combined to create a "brave new IT world" for organizations. This has raised a host of intriguing challenges for managers and researchers alike. This paper explores one of those challenges: acquiring skilled information technology (IT) professionals. More specifically, it examines the current and future employee skill sets desired by IT software and service provider firms. We focus on providers as a follow-up to previous studies on non-IT firms 1 (Abraham et al. 2006;Zwieg et al. 2006) and because of the projected growth of these organizations as a result of increased demand for technology solutions and outsourcing.Before proceeding further, a note on the terminology used in this paper will be helpful. While it is not the intent of this paper to provide definitive meanings for the following terms, it will be beneficial to ensure that key concepts are interpreted similarly by the readers, and in accordance with the authors' intent. We define "Information Technology" (IT) as a field about the analysis, design, development, implementation, support, and management of computer-based information systems, composed of software, hardware, people, procedures, and data (Davis and Inf Syst Front

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