Business skills valuable for IT workers...

A report by the Society of Information Management states that a sound business background combined with technical skills is very desirable in today's IT market.

An article in Computerworld states:

Based on interviews with 96 SIM members, all of them IT managers at firms ranging from small companies to multinational enterprises, the study found that business skills accounted for five of the 10 attributes organizations want from their in-house staffers over the next three years. The other five most-requested skills by CIOs include a mix of project management and technical skills, though the latter are still client-facing.

The article continues:

In contrast to the layoffs and hiring freezes that graduates faced at the start of the decade after the dot-com crash, the overall IT workforce is expected to remain stable until at least 2008, according to the report.

While some jobs, especially technical ones at larger organizations, continue to be outsourced, the IT jobs most likely to be retained and created in-house will emphasize business and management skills such as business process re-engineering or project planning, rather than purely technical skills, according to the report.

Even when I was an undergrad, IT students moaned about having to take non-technical courses - in business areas, writing, etc... I try to emphasize the importance of non-major courses - business and "soft" skills - to my students. IT does not operate in a vaccuum, and the key to remaining employable in the IT world is to be able to put the technical knowledge one possesses in a larger context - most typically, a business context. This is more true today in a world where there is the potential of outsourcing and offshoring jobs. Insight into business and project management skills coupled with strong technical skills is much harder to outsource than strong technical skills alone. One has to see the forest *and* the trees. I am happy to see this report as it confirms the message I've been giving.