The role of the IT pro has greatly evolved over the past decade. Colleagues may know you as the go-to person when their device is malfunctioning, but as IT departments worldwide advance from a traditional break/fix service to a more strategic entity, your colleagues will get to know you for far more than that. Businesses now rely on technology to meet their overall goals, and the switch to strategic IT gives IT pros more responsibilities and room for growth. Here are three ways that the evolution from tactical IT to strategic IT influences the organization and the IT pro.
- The IT department interacts with other business units differently.
- IT department structure and workload will change.
- Soft skills will become more important.
Traditionally, IT’s role has been to support business objectives and business units, which are driven by corporate goals. This method effectively makes the IT department a service department to the rest of the organization, giving IT little to no input on the topline objectives. IT is expected to provide the technology foundation and tools needed to succeed, as well as troubleshooting issues when they arise.
The support role of an IT pro isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but with strategic IT, IT pros are more heavily involved in decision making and planning. IT now can help build project plans and make recommedations instead of only taking direction from others.
When moving toward strategic IT, organizations are implementing new technologies that can be used by multiple business units, and they are also giving those business units more independence when it comes to technology. This makes it vital for IT departments to be involved from the ground up and to interact as peers with the business units so they can better recommend technology and tools that will achieve the organization’s goals.
The shift toward strategic IT also affects the makeup of the IT department. New projects and ideas often require more meetings and discussions. Implementation of new technology is also extremely time consuming and complicated.
Unfortunately, with all this growth in responsibility, the size of the IT department doesn’t necessarily grow at the same rate. On top of all the new, IT pros still have to maintain the old and ensure everything is operating as usual. This may cause some stress and make things busier, but it also opens the door for the IT pro to step up, take on additional responsibilities and learn new skills.
In addition to taking on new work, the IT team must work more efficiently and possibly even restructure. This may entail assigning specialties to each team member. For example, if you have a team of six IT pros, three of them could focus on network operations, security and maintaining current processes while the other three can attend meetings and planning sessions with business units regarding new technology and projects.
As IT pros become more involved in upper-level conversations and plans, soft skills are more important than ever. Strong communication, problem solving and project management are just a few of the skills that IT pros will have to perfect as strategic IT becomes more prominent. IT pros must be able to describe technical items in a way that someone in marketing or finance can easily understand.
Additionally, IT pros will have to think strategically to turn ideas into the best possible workable solution to achieve the organization’s goals. Since IT pros will have their hands in multiple projects at once, project management and prioritization will be essential.
Strategic IT brings many changes to the organization, but the overwhelming majority of changes are extremely positive and exciting. IT pros have a great opportunity to expand their knowledge, work on projects they hadn’t been able to in the past and grow in their careers.
Download Using Strategic IT for Competitive Advantage to learn more. This whitepaper from CompTIA relies on research across a variety of topics and conversations with IT professionals to provide a description of the way new technology is now integrated into business.
