Staffing for Sustainable Systems

If you want to know how effectively an IT department is run, all you need to do is look at the systems it designs and supports. Pardon the cliché, but building and maintaining an IT shop and the software it supports is something of an art. Talent, training, experience, and motivation are all reflected in the work of both geek and painter. Let's look at each of those points in turn:

Talent The number of specific talent categories listed on job boards such as Dice and Monster continues to increase, reflecting the degree of specialization in today's IT work force. History tells us that Specialization of Labor is a logical and necessary step in the advancement of an industry, resulting in huge advances in productivity. IT managers must recognize that these specialties truly are distinct skill sets, requiring separate staff, for as Plato pointed out, "One man cannot practice many arts with success." Note for tech workers: it is never too early to start specializing, even if you are capable in more than one area - employers are unlikely to believe it and they are looking for specialists anyway. Training We work in a fast-paced and constantly changing industry, and to fall behind is to perish. Training IT workers is the best investment a company can make to keep up with the times and to keep staff happy. A substantial training budget makes sense from an ROI standpoint as well. A $4,500/year training budget for a $70,000/year employee costs the same as 16 days of the lost productivity which often results from learning on the fly. For experienced workers, dedicating time to self-directed learning might make more sense than instructor-based courses. Note for tech workers: I believe that we have entered a phase of the tech cycle when emerging techologies, however exciting, are unlikely to take root in the mainstream business world. If you are already well-versed in current technologies, consider honing your knowledge of architectures and development patterns - anything that makes the development/maintenance process more efficient. Experience For an IT shop of any size, it is beneficial to employ workers with varying experience levels. Resist the temptation to rely on senior staff for all of the heavy lifting. Instead, they should be focused on directing the work of those with less experience. Using this strategy protects your business from disaster if you lose a highly-experienced employee, since the bulk of the work is distributed among many less mobile workers. There is another even more compelling reason to adopt an Apprenticeship model: since the 2001 dot-com bust, enrollment in Computer Science degree programs has fallen off, spurring predictions of a tech-worker shortage. The only way for businesses to combat this trend is to train their own IT staff from the ground up. Note for tech workers: Experience can be a Catch-22 - you can't get a job unless you're experienced, but you can't get experience without a job. To get a break, try volunteering your time, applying for internships, and contributing to open-source projects. Also, never overstate your experience. You are much more likely to get an offer if you truthfully rate your abilities and show excitement at the opportunity to improve. Motivation Call me a romantic, but I put more weight on motivation when hiring than I do any other criteria. The biggest challenge that comes from hiring enthusiastic people is keeping them excited about the job. Everyone has different motivating factors, as any pseudo-self-help book will tell you, but you need also to be aware of your employees' demotivating factors. Need some real-world examples? Rent Office Space. Seriously. Note for tech workers: Status reports are a fact of life. Once you get into the routine, you may even find them useful - what better documentation of your worthiness for promotion is there?

Properly implemented, this staffing strategy results in an IT culture that is beneficial to both company and employee. Hiring specialists for each skill set ensures competence in implementation and prevents employees from getting stuck with duties they have no interest in. Training employees saves time and ultimately money by avoiding implementation mistakes. Using senior staff to set direction and oversee work instead of building everything themselves ensures that when individuals leave, as highly-skilled techies are wont to do, things don't come to a screeching halt. In fact, when people leave it creates opportunities for advancement in the team - a real morale booster and a natural protection against job hoppers, since most new-hires are lower-level.

In short, lots of work will get done by people that know what they are doing, nobody will want to leave, but if they do, the whole staff can have a fun going-away party instead of crisis-management meetings.