Best practice for grooming critical mid-level roles

Abstract

The motivation for the study is to examine the effects of several trends on the IT workforce. The purpose of the study is to understand several key mid-level roles in IT client organizations, which are gaining importance for organizations as they employ alternative sourcing arrangements. Mid-level positions, such as project manager, senior system analyst, relationship manager and system architect, continue to be in demand in the organizations we study. Organizations use these roles to design solutions and coordinate their delivery. They also use these roles as a way to allow up-and-coming talent to demonstrate their leadership and problem-solving capabilities. Employees view these roles as an important opportunity to extend their knowledge and skills and to use their experience as a stepping stone toward a management career. This study is intent on better understanding the characteristics, traits and motivations of those who successfully fill these positions and identifying best practices for organizations to identify, develop and retain personnel to fill these roles. Justification for our topic and approach, along with preliminary results, are presented for this work-in-progress.

The requisite variety of skills for IT professionals

“…IT professionals must manage their own development using mechanisms such as job rotation, on-going training, and continuing education [10].…”

Careers in software

“…One of the programmers interviewed had moved through several groups within his company to gain skills in different technologies, pursuing what Schein (1990) calls a circumferential career path. Gallagher et al (2007) also find support for this phenomenon: "Responding to why they might leave or what caused turnover in these positions, the lack of a challenge was the overwhelming response. Several stated that if they had to do the same work for an extended period, they would rather change jobs or even work for another firm" (p.17).…”

“…(Gallagher, Kaiser, Frampton and Gallagher 2007, p.17) Further confusion for people considering a software career relates to roles. There are no clear role definitions in the software world (Belbin 2000;Shaw 2000;Gallagher et al 2007;Downey 2009). Two people with the same job title could have widely differing responsibilities.…”

Mid-Level Information Technology Professionals

“…Alternatively there is increasing demand for mid-level IT workers in positions such as project managers, systems analysts, and relationship managers (Gallagher et al, 2007;Zwieg et al, 2006), three key roles identified as vital to the IT department (Overby, 2007) according to an article in CIO Magazine. However, due to their lack of work experience, professionals may not be suited for the roles and responsibilities of these more advanced mid-level positions and what knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) are required in order to attain and succeed in such a role.…”

“…Organizations struggle to define and outline IT career ladders for their employees. This is especially problematic if they no longer hire into traditional entry-level positions (Gallagher et al, 2007). One respondent explained (in our exploratory research described shortly), "I can buy skills in the application development world offshore…but my architects, I want to develop in house… [but then] I'm taking a large part of the feeder group out…I'm going to have a problem here."…”