| If new technologies, such as autonomic computing, are to succeed, it will be necessary to create a skills development program. One of the surest ways to align strategies and workforce competencies with corporation vision is to create a road map from vision to execution. A skills management process starts in the future and works its way back to the present. An IT skills management process, for example, links the corporation's vision to a technology forecast. The technology forecasts to the required skills, the required skills to the IT skills inventory, the skills inventory to the IT staff's competence levels, and the competence levels to gaps and to the time frame during which those gaps need to be filled. Leadership, team building, marketing, business savvy, project management, manufacturing know-how, functional expertise, and institutional knowledge all are part of the skills picture. As shown in Figure 6.4, skills management serves as an order for managing the workforce. It lays out a road map for skills development, work role definition, career tracks, resource management, staffing allocation, workload balancing, and learning. With a road map, all members of the workforce can fit their strengths, weaknesses, and alternatives into the corporation's plans. Figure 6.4. Skills management—a road map for the workforce. Source: Gartner Group 
Skills management is becoming a lifeline in a turbulent IT labor market. Midsize and large corporations, businesses in the private and public sectors, aggressive and conservative companies—all are looking at skills management with renewed interest. Many corporations now recognize that the combined lack of corporation planning, imagination, and foresight are as much to blame for today's labor crunch as is the shortage of relevant IT skills. In that climate, skills management can be a powerful tool for bringing discipline, rationale, and cross-pollination to an underused process. Even more enticing, many IT professionals, under the mantle of career "entrepreneurism," will throw in their lot with corporations that have clearly committed to and funded skills management programs. Having a road map with which to guide career development is more meaningful than wandering until serendipity strikes. Before moving on, it is beneficial to make sure that everybody is speaking the same language. In the Gartner[3] Group's definition of perspective, skills management is a robust and systematic approach to forecasting, identifying, cataloguing, evaluating, and analyzing the workforce skills, competencies and gaps that corporations face. Although many programs and initiatives adopt the label skills management, most of them focus on skills inventory and fall short in analysis and forecasting. A well-designed skills management process injects a stronger dose of discipline, coordination, and planning into workforce planning, strategic planning, professional training and development programs, resource allocation maneuvering, and risk analysis and assessment. Corporations can reap several lessons from skills management. Skills management works if it does the following: -
Defines skills for roles -
Forces forward thinking -
Forces some documentation of what makes an IT professional especially proficient -
Strengthens the overall organization -
Leads to focused training, risk assessment, sourcing strategy, and resource allocation via gap identification -
Attracts high-level endorsement from senior management Skills management does not work when it: -
Does not define work roles -
Lacks plans or incentive for refreshment -
Communicates its purpose poorly -
Provides differing language and terminology -
Force-fits skills and work roles to policies, rather than driving new frameworks |
