In my last blog entry, I talked about the new professional and what that person looks like. Lets just take a slice of the model and just look at the IT professional. There has been a shift from a traditional IT professional who just was a programmer, developer, technician, etc to an one that is an architect. If you look at the graphic below, you will see the changes which I will explain shortly.
In the bottom right hand corner of the graphic, you will see where the traditional IT professionals exist. Now, I have not included all of them just a small sample. You will also see the line that goes between the business axis and the technology axis. Today, IT professionals need to have more than just technical skills. They need to have the business and soft skills necessary to be successful. They need to learn to straddle the fence between business and technology. That line between technology and business is where architecture sits. Architecture is about delivering enterprise systems solutions to businesses. Architecture is the holistic systems view of how the technology fits into the business. I also listed some sample job roles along the axis to show the new kinds of roles in a purely technical sense that exist. In a two-dimensional view, you will have a super-techie who understand the business and also deeply understands the technology. This professional delivers solutions to customers and clients based on their needs. This is a simplistic view and one that has changed even more. The whole reason for the third dimension is the architecture line is not as simple as portrayed here. There is another dimension that is of critical importance today. You will find that the new professional must have a deep technical background but also a deep background in the context as we will explore in another entry. Now, do not think there is not a career progression here. There is but we must educate the upcoming professionals to understand what they will need to be successful in the future marketplace. A professional may start at one end of either the business or technology spectrum but over time they must either gain more business acumen or more technical acumen to be successful.
As we enter the creative age and ideas drive the world, I believe we are entering a technological renaissance, where form and function are equally important. In the past all technologies were driven on introduction of features (function). The design of the technologies are important and sometimes more important to people. Also, the addition of understanding where people fit into the process is also important. I have a vision for the new professional that I want to reintroduce -
“The new professional has deep business and technical skills, interdisciplinary expertise, and the ability to deliver the value of those skills to customers or clients.”
This statement is a pretty loaded but I want to introduce to you a 3D model of this new professional.
The new professional needs to have both business and technical skills and a context to deliver those skills in. The context can be the natural sciences such as biology, chemistry, nanotech, etc. or financial, health, gaming, movie, etc. This allows the new professional to be more interdisciplinary in nature than in the past. The context is becoming an increasing important piece to a new professionals knowledge and skillset. More and more employers are looking at professionals today to have this interdisciplinary expertise. With biotech, nanotech, chemtech, energy tech, and other applied science disciplines becoming more critical to today’s economy. In those contexts, professionals are going to need to be able to bring innovative ideas from an idea to product/service and then into the marketplace. These new professionals need to understand innovation and how innovations are introduced to a society/community. This new creative age is bringing about about a new renaissance. Anything new being introduced is going to need to have both form and function and something that will appeal to customers or clients.
Marc Prensky in July blogged about verbs versus nouns (http://www.marcprensky.com/blog/archives/2009_07.html) when talking about lasting skills versus technology. From my doctoral work in the studying of Activity Theory, I came to the understanding that technologies are just tools for a subject uses to work towards a goal. In activity theory language, these are called mediating artifacts. They are a means to an end and not an end in itself. In Prensky’s language, he calls the technology the “nouns”. “Nouns” change all the time. We know that the technologies change every six months or so. But, “verbs” or the skills such as “doing presentations” do not change as often. The tools, or the nouns, change but the actual skill does not. So, when we are developing programs we need to think about the “verbs” or skills that we need to be teaching the next generation of technologists versus just focusing on the tools. Prensky’s post was a good explanation of a topic which is interest of mine. I will be honest that I was focused too much on the “nouns” in the past but now I look at this a little differently now. The challenge we have as educators is that students look at the “nouns” when they are looking into programs. They care about whether or not we are up to date in our technologies when we know that the skills are more important because those will be portable and last when the technologies change before our eyes. Students need to realize that the “nouns” will change more than a few times while they are in school and so they need to stay up to date on the changes but master the skills that use those technologies mediating to accomplish the goal. So, technologies are a means to an end. The skills are the end in themselves. The skills use the technologies to get things done and yes students need to make sure they can use the tools and stay current with them.
