2018-07-04
IT团队每年似乎都面临类似的挑战（人才短缺，预算紧张），但他们用来应对这些挑战的技术和方法正在迅速发展。
如今的IT行业与20年前截然不同，但似乎年复一年地面临着同样的挑战：人才和技能短缺，以及预算限制。虽然面临的挑战是一样的，但是解决方式有很大的不同。
新技术和方法，如云计算、DevOps和数据分析，正在帮助IT团队解决诸如基础设施能力、项目优先级排序和客户理解等问题，其影响远远超过旧的解决方案。随着IT领导的数字化转型，创新型解决方案将用来应对旧挑战。
最近，InformationWeek和Interop ITX对400名IT专业人士进行了一次调查，以更好地了解他们的优先事项、挑战，以及用来实现目标的技术和策略。
在IT行业迅速发展的2017年，IT团队面临哪些挑战呢？根据调查结果，我们列出了前十大挑战。
在2017年，“理解外部客户”方面的挑战很小。60%的受访者表示，根本不存在或者根本不关心这个问题。也许，这归结于当今客户创造的巨大数据，以及公司用来更好地了解客户的高级数据收集和分析工具。27%的受访者表示，他们的公司已经在实施客户服务分析，另有34％的受访者正在评估或计划在未来12个月内实施客户服务分析策略。
45%的受访者表示，为了应对IT人才短缺，他们将寻求使用更多的外包服务和承包服务，所以IT企业应该与外包承包商维持良好的关系，这一点很重要。幸运的是，在2017年IT面临的挑战榜上，这个挑战是很小的。考虑到IT企业已经使用外包服务多年，这一点并不奇怪。
在过去的五到十年间，各组织开始对IT部门的工作表现出积极的态度。高管们也认识到了IT部门的努力，并让他们参与会议。我们很高兴看到IT部门与其它部门和高管的关系不断改善。只有5％的受访者表示，他们与其它部门的关系仍然是一个重大挑战。只有14％的受访者表示与其它部门的不良关系正在阻碍IT创新。
IT部门面临该挑战的原因并不是因为他们缺乏好想法。我们的研究显示，只有25％的受访者认为IT技能不足阻碍了组织创新。那么原因到底是什么呢？答案是他们的日常工作和预算。近一半（49％）的受访者表示，他们受困于日常业务，47％的受访者表示缺乏预算会妨碍创新。
尽管这远不是最大的IT挑战，但是没有适当的系统对项目进行优先级排序是很令人担忧的。一个有组织的IT商店是高效和创意的，如果IT团队没有流程和技术进行优先级排序，则他们很可能只能对拥有最大预算的项目做出响应。这意味着其它具有影响力，但预算较少的项目可能会等上数月甚至数年！
有一个好消息是，49％的受访者表示他们已经采用或将会采用DevOps：14％已经采用，20％将在未来两年内采用，另外15％将在两年后采用。但是，DevOps并不是唯一的选择。51%的受访者不打算采用DevOps，他们或者拥有自己的项目交付流程，或者正在寻找另一个模型或系统。
2017年，存储和管理企业创建和收集的所有数据仍然是一个巨大的挑战。40%的受访者表示，存储/数据的增长对其IT基础设施影响最大。
受访者表示计划在2017年购买云服务，其它技术则侧重于IT培训和教育。他们还表示，云将在未来五年对企业产生最大的积极影响。这可能会发展缓慢，无法在短期内实现业务目标，但是随着更多的组织因云迁移而腾出时间和空间，我们可能会在未来几年内获得改进。
显而易见的是，这些挑战都不是独立的，它们相互影响。IT部门正在努力实现足够快的速度，来实现2017年的业务目标。一半的IT人员表示，他们困于日常运作，很难有时间和精力进行创新。
对于IT领导来说，IT技能差距并不抽象。64%的受访者表示，在2017年，没有适当的技能对他们的团队来说是一个中等挑战。42％的受访者表示，相比于外部招聘，他们在员工再培训方面更加成功，帮助员工掌握云、移动或数据分析等新技术。而37％的受访者表示，他们在招聘和再培训方面并驾齐驱。大约五分之一的受访者表示，他们在招聘外界人士来满足技能需求方面更加成功。
受访者也在寻找吸引人才的方法，排名前三的方法是：提供更加灵活的时间（41％），增加培训以提高现有人才的技能（33％），提供全时远程办公（21％）。
55％的受访者表示，2017年的预算有所增加，但仍然不足以达成业务目标。在经过多年的削减和冻结之后，许多预算可能还在恢复之中。这可能就是“IT预算不足以实现目标”的原因，是2017年IT部门面临的第二大挑战。
20％的受访者表示预算不到5％，24％的受访者表示预算为5％-10，只有11％的受访者表示预算超过了10％。47％的受访者表示缺乏预算阻碍了IT创新。
预算紧张和技能短缺是最大的挑战。60%的受访者表示，他们在一个或多个IT领域存在人才短缺问题。25％的受访者表示，人才短缺阻碍了IT创新。根据该研究，IT技能差距导致的最大业务影响是IT项目延迟（53％），其次是劣质IT项目（30％）。40％的受访者表示IT招聘被冻结，14％的受访者表示要雇用外包商和承包商，25％的受访者表示他们正在聘请专业技术人员，而只有14％的受访者表示他们正在跨多个IT领域进行招聘。
报告的作者指出，解决人才短缺的一种方法是迁移到云服务提供商，他认为这能够减少人力要求。
尽管IT部门面临各种挑战，但65％的受访者仍然认为IT业是一个伟大的职业，并会向年轻人推荐。
9/18/2017
While IT teams seem to face similar obstacles every year (talent shortages, tight budgets), the technology and methods they use to meet those challenges are rapidly improving and evolving.
The IT business is drastically different from 20 years ago, yet it seems to be plagued by the same challenges year after year: talent and skills shortages and budget constraints. While the obstacles may be the same, the way they’re addressed and how they’re solved is drastically different.
New technology and practices such as cloud computing, DevOps, and data analytics are helping IT face issues like infrastructure capacity, project prioritization, and customer insights head on, and the impact is far greater than solutions of old. As IT leaders transform their businesses digitally, these same old challenges will be met with new, innovative solutions.
InformationWeek and Interop ITX recently conducted a survey of 400 IT professionals to better understand their priorities and challenges and the technologies and tactics they are using to meet their goals.
What do your IT peers find challenging as we move -- pretty quickly -- through 2017? Here we count down the top 10 challenges IT faces today as we near the dawn of 2018, according to our survey. For the full results, download the complete report.
10. Don’t understand our external customers well enough
In 2017, "understanding external customers" is low on IT’s list of challenges when it comes to achieving business goals. Sixty percent of respondents said it was either not at all or barely a concern. Perhaps this is due to the immense amount of data today’s customers create and the advanced data collection and analytics tools companies use to better understand their customers. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said their companies were already implementing customer service analytics, and another 34% are evaluating or plan to implement a customer service analytics strategy in the next 12 months.
9. Don’t have the right outsourcing relationships
Forty-five percent of respondents said that to cope with the IT talent shortage they would look to use more outsourcing and contractors, so it’s important that IT has good relationships with the people they’re outsourcing their work to. Luckily, this is fairly low on the list of challenges IT faces in 2017, and unsurprisingly so, considering IT has dealt with outsourcing for many years.
8. Don’t have good business unit relationships
Over the last five to 10 years we’ve seen organizations begin to shine a positive light on the work of the IT department. We’ve also seen executives recognize IT’s efforts and give them a seat at the table. It’s good to see that IT’s relationship with other business units and executives is improving. Only 5% of respondents said that their relationship with business units was a major challenge in 2017, and only 14% of respondents said that poor relationships with other business units were getting in the way of IT innovation.
7. Don’t offer innovative, business-relevant ideas
The challenge IT faces in to offer more innovative, business-relevant ideas probably isn’t because they’re short on good ideas. Our research revealed that only 25% say inadequate IT skills is a barrier to innovation in their organization. So, what’s getting in the way? Their daily tasks and budget. Nearly half (49%) of respondents to our survey said they’re tied up with day-to-day operations and (47%) said lack of budget gets in the way of producing innovative ideas.
6. Don’t have systems to prioritize projects
While it is still below the halfway mark in terms of the greatest IT challenge, not having the right systems in place to prioritize projects should be worrisome. An organized IT shop is an efficient and creative IT shop, and if IT teams don’t have the processes and technology to prioritize projects, they’ll likely only ever be able to respond to the projects that hold the greatest budgets. That means other projects that are impactful but wield smaller budgets could end up in the queue for months to years!
Some good news is that 49% of respondents said they either have adopted or will adopt DevOps -- 14% have already adopted it, 20% will move to it in the next two years, and another 15% will start sometime after that. However, not everyone is sold on DevOps as the end-all-be-all for project delivery. Fifty-one percent of survey respondents do not plan to adopt DevOps at all, which reveals that about half of the respondents either have their own project delivery process or are looking for another model or system.
5. Don’t have enough IT infrastructure capacity
In 2017, storing and managing all the data that the businesses create and gather remains a huge challenge for IT. Forty percent of respondents said that the growth of storage/data was having the greatest effect on their IT infrastructure.
While this may be a current issue, above all other technologies, respondents said they planned to purchase cloud services in 2017, which others are focused on IT training and education. They also said that cloud would have the greatest positive effects on the business in the next five years. While things may be moving too slowly now to really deliver on business objectives, we’ll likely see improvements over the next few years as more organizations free up time and space because of cloud migrations.
4. Can’t implement fast enough to meet business goals
It may be becoming apparent that none of these challenges stand on their own, and often each challenge impacts several others. IT is struggling to implement fast enough to meet business goals in 2017, which should come as no surprise considering we already learned that IT is concerned about the ways they prioritize projects, and half of IT says they struggle to innovate because they’re too busy working on day-to-day operations.
3. Don’t have the right IT skills
For IT leaders, the IT skills gap is not an abstraction. Sixty-four percent of respondents said that not having the right skills is a moderate to major concern for their team in 2017. IT isn’t just pouting about this issue, though. Forty-two percent say they have more success retraining internal candidates for new technology specialties such as cloud, mobile, or data analysis than hiring from the outside, while 37% said they’re split on hiring and retraining. About one fifth of the respondents said they have more success bringing in outsiders to meet their skills needs.
Respondents are also looking at ways to attract new talent, and their top three methods are: offering more flexible hours (41%), increasing training to improve current talent -- “grow our own” -- (33%), and offering full-time telecommuting (21%).
2. IT budgets are insufficient to meet goals
While 55% of respondents said budgets are up in 2017, they still may not be enough to meet business objectives. And many budgets are likely still recovering after years of cuts and freezes. This could be why we see “IT budgets are insufficient to meet goals” as the second greatest challenge to IT in 2017.
Twenty percent of respondents’ budget are up less than 5%, and 24% are up 5% to 10%. Only 11% are up more than 10%, and 47% of respondents said that lack of budget is a barrier to IT innovation.
1. Don’t have enough IT people
Again, we see the impact of other challenges -- in this case budgets and skills shortages -- in IT’s top challenge. Sixty percent of respondents said they face an IT talent shortage in one or more areas of IT and 25% say the talent shortage gets in the way of IT innovation. According to the research, the greatest business impact of the IT skills gap is delayed IT projects (53%), followed by poor-quality IT projects (30%). While 40% of respondents said that IT hiring is frozen, 14% said they were looking to hire outsourcers and contractors, 25% said they were looking to hire for specialized skills, and only 14% said they are looking to hire across many IT areas.
The author of the reports suggests that one way to manage a staff shortage, in addition to many of IT’s other top challenges, is to move to a cloud service provider, which he argues would require fewer hands on deck.
Despite all the challenges IT faces in 2017, 65% of respondents still think IT is a great career and would recommend it to young people.
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