Enlightened IT

“Information technology tends to operate in a silo environment and to provide services more reactively rather than proactively,” Amidon says. “ITIL provides a structure and guidance for managing IT more proactively, to begin reaching out and asking what business units need of IT, and seeking input on improving service to those groups.”

Indeed, IT is increasingly asked to help managers customize reports from data warehouses on things like historical sales data or on the nuances of customer buying behavior, so managers can create more targeted marketing campaigns. Such requests require an equal dose of technical and people skills, since IT employees are usually juggling competing demands from other parts of the organization. “The days when you’d go to the mainframe folks, request a report, and be happy to get something back a week later are over,” Amidon says. “Today business leaders demand instant information, customized to their needs, from data warehouses and other sources.”

Amidon says that one organization for a number of years has sent its IT staff to the college’s interpersonal skills courses—classes such as conflict resolution, effective communication, and leadership skills. “It reflects how important good people skills are to effective IT departments,” he says. “People attracted to IT jobs today know they’ll usually have to do more than write Java code all day, so many are interested in working on their communication skills.”

The need to think strategically is greatest for IT executives, and as a result, students enrolling in graduate-level programs today are likely to find even greater emphasis than in years past on strategic planning, portfolio management (effectively managing projects across an organization), and risk management. Gary Jurek, an associate professor of project management at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, which has campuses in Winona and the Twin Cities, says too often companies make decisions about technology solutions without understanding the impact of those decisions on other systems and applications in the organization. When it comes to managing new IT initiatives, Jurek teaches his students to spend plenty of time exploring business-unit needs and perspectives.

“With new implementations, they really need to know who their key stakeholders are in the company, how success is measured for those people, and how well the technology will interface with other organizational systems,” Jurek says. “You can have the most technical expertise and greatest interpersonal skills in the world, but if you don’t know who your stakeholders are, and what they need from IT to help achieve their operating goals, you are dead in the water.”

Jurek also stresses the concept of “traceability” in his project management courses—IT leaders should always be able to trace their investments directly back to business goals, be it improved customer service, more efficient teamwork, or reducing labor costs. “If my students can’t defend IT expenditures by linking them up to a corporate goal or objective, the odds increase that they will fail in the real world,” he says. “When push comes to shove, they are not going to get the resources or funding they need to be successful.”