The 2019 State of the CIO confirmed that finding and nurturing the right skills to support digital transformation and the ongoing IT agenda is a significant hurdle for many IT organizations. Technology skills were the biggest gap — half of respondents cited technology integration and implementation skills as the most elusive — but finding people with the right set of soft skills in areas like change management, strategy building and relationship management was equally challenging.
Source: Good tech talent is still hard to find (how to bridge the gap)
I must say that I believe there’s much of a grey area in this article. In my opinion, I don’t think one can really state “integration and implementation skills” as being elusive. I believe it’s more avoided by most management. The reason being is that most fear that which they do not understand. I know that most of my fellow Open Source or GNU Linux peers would love to jump at those opportunities if they were ever allowed to. I don’t speak for others, but I feel the use of various forms of technology as Lego pieces. The motivation and pride is not really in building the Lego thing as displayed on the box, but rather taking a bunch of pieces from other Lego projects and forming something new and different. Or even building something common from scratch is just as rewarding.
I must also say that the lack of soft skills like change management, strategy building and relationship is the result of departmental separation. It’s frowned upon for a an IT Admin, Programmer, and/or Security Professional that’s at the worker bee level to communicate and collaborate together to address issues or goals. Some end up having to play the telephone game going up and back down the chain of command that get’s incorrectly translated or conveyed. Yes, I know that Change Management is an important thing. The question is at what level is the formality of going through the Change Management process really providing the value to effort a benefit? Many lack in the soft skill areas because they’re not really allowed to view or participate in the “Bigger Picture”. Without that they’ll lack the ability to understand the various different perspectives to plan a strategy and manage relationships. Which is why there is often great debates between different IT departments; especially Information Security with everyone else.
