Computer Weekly July 23, 1998 User needs send top staff back to school.(retraining) (Industry Trend or Event) Author/s: John Kavanagh Senior IT staff are queuing up for formal management training as users demand more focus on service, rather than just technical expertise. This is according to the leader of a course leading to an independent qualification. Training firm Ultracomp said more than I ,000 people will this year take courses leading to IT management qualifications run by the Information Systems Examinations Board, part of the British Computer Society. This will be almost double the number that took the courses last year, said Vernon Lloyd, chief consultant in IT management training at Ultracomp. His view is confirmed by the examinations board, which said almost 200 people took the two-week course for the full qualification in the first six months of 1998, and more than 500 had the three-day course covering the IT service management part. Ultracomp also runs one-day courses on each of the other components and issues its own certificates. There have been rises in demand for all the courses, Lloyd said. He believed this was encouraging for IT departments. "Some people still see themselves working solely in IT and have the attitude that everything would be fine if it weren't for users, but the response to these qualifications suggest that this is changing," he said. "IT people increasingly see themselves supporting the business. "A big driver has been user expectations of customer service, especially if they are charged internally for IT." Lloyd also thinks such demands are leading IT people to look for formal management methods. "In the past people have typically gone their own way, but now they're looking for an independent method or, indeed, any method at all," he said. He found that some organisations send along one or two people and then another 40 for different aspects to get all junior, middle and senior management working on the same wavelength. Geoff Thirlwall, IT service director at Bass Brewers, took the service management course last year after 20 years in computer operations. "I'd done the job all my life but the course explained it in formal terms and gave me a framework for measuring what we already have in place," he said. User demand for IT service is also reflected in the take-up of courses leading to the Information Systems Examinations Board qualification in project management. More than 310 people took it in the first half of this year, compared with 533 in the whole of 1997. |
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