A guest post by Vaclav Vincalek

In earlier post we talked about the impact of the contingent economy on consulting firms and Kharis O’Connell explored related changes at design agencies. Here Vaclav Vincalek considers the forces causing changes at systems integrators.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that the world is accelerating at an ever-increasing rate. We are bombarded with announcements of new products and service offerings. Companies (and not only technology companies) are racing to get new and innovative products to the market. The disruptive companies of yesteryear are now hunted by packs of ravenous start-ups, who bite off any unprotected business.

As a member of senior management, you would like to keep stable predictable and focused teams in place. You need some stability around you to keep the madness outside of your office walls at bay. Here is the problem. You can’t have that stability. As markets change you and your team have to change as well, and this means that your approach to team building has to change.

The view from my seat

Here are few observations from the perspective of the leadership of an IT consulting company. They are based on my experience, but I think they will become common to the leaders of many types of company over the next few years. My company strives to build innovative business solutions for our customers. We rarely build something completely new from scratch. Many pieces are already in place and this means we have to be able to understand and leverage existing infrastructure and applications, create new applications using new technologies, and do this based on a deep understanding of the business needs.

Once upon a time the main qualification for job at an IT consulting company was your ability to build a computer (which you sometimes called a server), install Microsoft software and connect to a network, where other connected Windows machines could exchange a text file. If this is still your badge of honour, you must be reading this from a retirement home.

The most important skillset? Integrate and learn (play well with others)

The most important technical skillset you need these days is an understanding of how to integrate many different available technologies and how to keep yourself current. There is a limit how much any one person, or even any company, can know about all the technologies in use today. You become an expert in several of them while keeping informed about many. To succeed you have to be able to make technologies play well with others and you have to play well yourself.

The problem as a manager is, where do you find the people who can integrate all these new and disparate systems? People who can innovate on the business and the technology?

What this really comes down to is building effective teams. You know that for a project you need four specific functions: business analyst, architect, and developer, QA. And you will probably need project management as well. Does it mean that you need at least 4 or 5 people? Can you put people in multiple roles? How will the team requirements change over the course of the project? How will other projects impact the team? How do long-term goals impact the team? You will need a different team to build core enterprise infrastructure than you do to build a rapid marketing app with a short intended lifespan.

Conclusion: Focus on building the team

Before you set out new project, focus on building your team. My biggest successes when hiring people were with people able to demonstrate high levels of technical knowledge and subject matter expertise. You need both. In case of programmers, it is not just knowledge of a particular programming language that matters. A good programmer needs to understand the principals of programming itself. The next of the criteria is that people need to both understand concepts and demonstrate imagination. Finally, great people are able to communicate with the rest of the team.

I call these ‘the renaissance people.’ They have the ability to see past the technology, imagine the solution and then build it from the available pieces.

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