Coporate IT skill needs: a case study of BigCo.

This paper reports on a case study of the IT skills and needs at one site. The data is organized by assessing the members of BigCo's Corporate IT group regarding their present IT skill levels and the perception of skill needs both now and three years in the future. This work relies on a categorization drawn from both academic and professional literature regarding skill needs for IT professionals. In doing this work we draw on surveys, interviews, focus groups and archival documents to build a rich and detailed perspective on skill needs for the IT professionals at BigCo's Corporate IT group. Findings show that there is an implicit set of conceptual IT skills that IT professionals are expected to have. Further, the non-IT skill needs are presently very important and are expected to become even more important. Finally, there are important department-level, experience, and gender variations in the responses suggesting that IT roles are growing both more numerous and more specialized.