IT Education's Failure to Deliver Successful Information Systems: Now is the Time to Address the IT-User Gap

Abstract

Executive SummaryIT curricula were created in business schools because traditional computer scientists had problems building information systems that were acceptable to the people that use them. Now, many years later, the percentage of unsuccessful information systems is still alarmingly high. Research in this area tended to be focused on the project level and seemed to ignore the growing conflict between end-users and the IT department as a whole.The IT-User gap is pervasive and takes many different forms. In fact, the IT-User gap has become such a problem that many organizations are taking matters into their own hands by creating new hybrid positions to bridge the gap. Personnel in these positions bridge the gap by helping end-users deal with the IT personnel and vice versa. Moreover, despite extensive obstacles, these people are taking on the challenge and becoming quite successful. The names of these positions may vary widely (relationship manager, IT-User Liaison, etc.) but they all have similar roles in the organization. This paper begins with the premise that the IT-User gap will not disappear but that we could be doing more in our IT curricula to address the gap. First, the curriculum for IT majors should recognize that the role of IT professionals is changing in organizations and that the trend is for IT professionals to need stronger interpersonal skills and an organizational learning perspective. Second, the curriculum must be modified to give more than just lip service to the importance of these skills.Changes to the IT curriculum, however, may not be enough. If organizations have found hybrid personnel to be indispensible, then it is time that IT curricula begin to prepare students to take on this new career. IT programs often have students that are not very strong programmers but yet really like working with computers. Rather than encouraging the students to change majors, we should recognize that organizations can benefit from their skills too. This paper addresses the issue by presenting two enhancements to the traditional IT curriculum. The first is a hybrid major that emphasises that the person would need both technical and inter-personal skills. The second is a hybrid minor that would allow non-IT business majors or even non-business majors to enhance their technical skills enough to be effective liaisons between their work group and the IT department.

Mind the Gap

“…They point out that the ability to interact with all potential stakeholders in an organisation, to clearly document requirements, and to effectively express ideas has long been recognized by researchers and practitioners as critical success factors. Mann (2002) notes that there is little literature on the gap between end-users and the IT department. It has been observed that IT personnel have different personality traits than does the general population, going some way towards explaining why there is a gap.…”