Learning and development of IT staff

Communication and interpersonal skills development

The core, unique, issue that impacts on learning and development within the IT function is that the function - and that means of course the individuals within it - have somehow to form the interface between:

Very logical machines with no feelings and no ambiguities, and

Human beings who are often illogical, have feelings, and are quite ambiguous in many ways.

The outstanding IT professional has to be effective in dealing with both these very different types of dialogue. Most often, people are recruited into IT on the basis of their ability to be logical, their aptitude for programming, and/or analysing. The challenge then is to develop the other side of their skills: their communication and interpersonal skills.

Business skills development

IT people ideally should be very interested in the business they support. That means understanding how things actually work out there. How is business conducted? What happens behind the scenes? Who does what? What are competitor companies doing? What will determine success in the future?

This kind of knowledge and awareness cannot be taught in a classroom, but will be picked up by motivated people - those with business orientation - as they work alongside business colleagues.

Technical skills development

This is often a forgotten area, but there is a lot happening in terms of technical skills development at present.

One of the themes is accreditation.