Chapter 13 • Leading the Information Systems Function 551Technical
Systems analysis
Systems design
Programming
Systems testing
Database design/administration
IT architecture/standards
Operations (Service delivery/ITIL)
Mainframe
Distributed systems
Operating systems
Voice/data telecommunications
Help desk/desktop support
Continuity/disaster recovery
Project Management
Project team leadership
Project planning, budgeting, & scheduling
Project risk management
User relationship management
CMM utilization
Working globally/virtual teaming
Business Domain
Account management & communications
Industry application knowledge
Company-specific knowledge
Function-specific knowledge
Business process design & reengineering
Change management/readiness
Sourcing
Sourcing strategy
Third-party provider selection
Contracting /amp; legal
Vendor relationship management
IT Administration
IT governance
Financial management
Internal HR managementFIGURE 13.12 IT Skills and Capabilities by Category (Based
on Zwieg et al., 2006)managers, most IT professionals have specific technical
duties and require specialized training. To ensure that the
right skill sets are identified, many IS organizations have
expanded their involvement in recruiting new IT personnel
by establishing a direct reporting relationship with staff
members in the Human Resources organization who are
responsible for attracting and recruiting IT workers. Another
common initiative to reduce job-hopping among IT person-
nel has been to develop formal “coaching” programs.
Most IS leaders also regularly monitor their annual
retention rates for IT personnel, usually stated as
“turnover” rates. However, the ideal turnover rate for one
organization may not be similar to that for another organi-
zation. This can be due to several reasons. For example,
the need for an organization to expand skills in a newer
emerging technology may mean that a high turnover rate
for personnel with skills for older technologies is ideal. Or
an organization may need to retain industry-specific or
company-specific knowledge of its employees, and thus a
lower turnover rate for these types of skills is ideal.
Common practices that organizations have used to retain
IT workers in general are provided in Figure 13.13. Note
that many of these practices are devoted to the continuing
professional development of IT staff—including skill and
competency training as well as career planning. With
product life cycles for software becoming shorter, it is not
uncommon for large organizations to have some of its IT
workforce in training most of the time.
Decisions about the mix of internal and external IS
staffing have become more complex in recent years as the
outsourcing options have grown. A recent survey
suggests that the skills most likely to be outsourced by
companies in developed countries are technical skills.
Client organizations are most likely to retain project
management and business domain skills of IT profession-
als (see Figure 13.14).
For those readers aspiring to be entry-level IT pro-
fessionals, it should be kept in mind that many technical
skills are still needed not only by client organizations in
developed countries but also by IT vendors—especially
those that specialize in specific IT services or application
solutions for a specific industry—such as health care or
financial services. Further, several U.S.-based service
providers are also multinational firms, with IT service cen-
ters around the world (e.g., IBM and EDS).
The salaries of IS professionals are highly dependent
on local labor markets, and the demands for specific IT
skill sets for workers in developed countries are somewhat
cyclical. For example, in the second half of the 1990s the
demands for IT professionals with both COBOL skills as
well as newer Web technology skills greatly exceeded the
U.S. supply. But after venture capital investments in new
dot-com ventures came to a standstill early in the twenty-
first century, the supply exceeded the demand. This in turn
led to fewer enrollments in IT educational programs in
U.S. universities and colleges, and just before the recent
economic downturn (beginning in 2008), attracting and
retaining IT professionals had again become one of the
top five concerns of IS leaders (Agarwal et al., 2006).
As this textbook goes to press, the health-care industry
in the United States, which had been a laggard in IT