Disconnect between business and IT is increasing and could signal serious change how enterprise technology is run, reports IT World Canada. Michael O’Neil from Info-Tech Research Group thinks that the future of the IT professional no longer lies in acting as an important support system or innovative visionary but as a “utility.” The role where IT functions as a discrete, advisory body will disappear while the majority of IT professionals are assimilated into areas pertaining to business processes and strategy.
There is also an interesting discussion on InfoQ if Agile can rescue this widening gap.

Comments: I don’t think IT should be rescued. The narrow specialization of IT and Software Development professionals and their remoteness from the problem domain and decisions are the serious problems in software creation. I consider disappearance of specialized IT services and departments as a good trend. I hope that combination with another trend – disappearance of centralized and hierarchical corporations – will produce powerful cumulative effect. The companies will become conglomerates of small cross-functional and diverse teams, empowered to make most decisions. Programmers will have deep domain expertise in addition to specialized knowledge how to build programs. Benefits are better decision making, market response and people motivation. See my post The Ideal Software Company.

Posted by Andriy Solovey | Permalink | Trackback