Map Technical Skills for a Changing Infrastructure & Operations Organization
Be practical and proactive – identify needed technical skills for your future state environment and the most efficient way to acquire them.
- Infrastructure & Operations is changing rapidly. It’s a constant challenge to find the right skills to support the next new technology while at the same time maintaining the skills in house that allow you to support your existing platforms.
- A lack of clarity around required skills makes finding the right skills difficult, and it’s not clear whether you should train, hire, contract, or outsource to address gaps.
- You need to keep up with changes and new strategy while continuing to support your existing environment.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Take a strategic approach to acquiring skills – looking only as far as the needs of the next project will lead to a constant skills shortage with no plan for it to be addressed.
- Begin by identifying your future state. Identify needed skills in the organization to support planned projects and initiatives, and to mitigate skills-related risks.
Impact and Result
- Leverage your infrastructure roadmap and cloud strategy to identify needed skills in your future state environment.
- Decide how you’ll acquire needed skills based on the characteristics of need for each skill.
- Communicate the change and create a plan of action for the skills transformation.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
10.0/10
Overall Impact
5
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Toronto District School Board
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
5
Fred was knowledgeable, diplomatic and effective. This engagement was very well executed.
Toronto District School Board
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
N/A
Texas Children's Hospital
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
N/A
Workshop: Map Technical Skills for a Changing Infrastructure & Operations Organization
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Review Initiatives and Skills-Related Risks
The Purpose
- Identify process and skills changes required by the future state of your environment.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Set foundation for alignment between strategy-defined technology initiatives and needed skills.
Activities
Outputs
Review the list of initiatives and projects with the group.
- Future State Playbook
Identify how key support, operational, and deployment processes will change through planned initiatives.
Identify skills-related risks and pain points.
Module 2: Identify Needed Skills and Roles
The Purpose
- Identify process and skills changes required by the future state of your environment.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Set foundation for alignment between strategy-defined technology initiatives and needed skills.
Activities
Outputs
Identify skills required to support the new environment.
Map required skills to roles.
- IT/Cloud Architect Role Description
- IT/Cloud Engineer Role Description
- IT/Cloud Administrator Role Description
Module 3: Create a Plan to Acquire Needed Skills
The Purpose
- Create a skills acquisition strategy based on the characteristics of need.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Optimal skills acquisition strategy defined.
Activities
Outputs
Modify impact scoring scale for key skills decision factors.
- Technical Skills Map
Apply impact scoring scales to needed skills
Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource to acquire needed skills.
Module 4: Develop a Communication Plan
The Purpose
- Create an effective communication plan for different stakeholders across the organization.
- Identify opportunities to leverage the skills map elsewhere.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Create a concise, clear, consistent, and relevant change message for stakeholders across the organization.
Activities
Outputs
Review skills decisions and decide how you will acquire skills in each role.
Update roles descriptions.
Create a change message.
- Technical Skills Map Communication Deck
Identify opportunities to leverage the skills map in other processes.
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst
Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 6 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation 1: Identify skills needs for your future state environment
- Call 1: Discuss drivers for this project. Connect upcoming initiatives to environmental changes and skills-related risks.
- Call 2: Review roles and skills required to support your future state environment.
Guided Implementation 2: Acquire needed skills
- Call 1: Review the five key factors that influence your decision to hire, train, contract, or outsource needed skills.
- Call 2: Review strategies for training, hiring, contracting, or outsourcing skills.
Guided Implementation 3: Maximize the value of your skills map
- Call 1: Review what the change is, why it’s happening, how it will be rolled out, how long it will take, and how stakeholders will be affected.
- Call 2: Identify additional programs and projects that can add value to your skills map exercise.
Contributors
- Thomas J. Berray, Managing Partner, Cabot Consultants
- Deborah Gelch, CIO and CISO, Lasell College
- David Linthicum, SVP, Cloud Technology Partners
- Alan Harnum, Senior Inclusive Developer, Inclusive Design Research Centre, OCAD University
- Gene Kim, Author, CTO and DevOps Enthusiast
- Keith Keller, CTO for Information Technology, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- Dr. John Medcof, Professor and Associate Dean, McMaster University
- Patrick Tinklenberg, VP of IT, Sycuan Casino
- Oliver Tsai, IT Director, Sunnybrook Health Sciences
- 2 anonymous contributors
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