Your right about changing the focus to productivity. But you didnot address the countless thousands of programmers and support personnel who have a focus on a particuler skill set. Which does not protect them from the corporate axe. We already know the the first group that management looks at to cut cost is the IT departmwent. Because IT does not generate any money for the company. We are looked at as a necessary evil.

Chris

If your company thinks that IT does not make any money you have one of two problems:

1) Your IT department actually does nothing

2) You need a new CIO who can better explain how much money IT is saving the company.

Of course, the solution to #1 is #2.

"How to recession-proof your IT career?"

Become a manager.

This is not very profound advice.

I know how to config and maintain Cisco firewalls/high-end switches/broadband aggregator router/ATM switches and I am getting proficient on the new Microsoft Exchange does this mean my job is recession-proof?

In the U.S. of A., everything is temporary as far as your pocket is concerned.

At my organization there is the constant battle over IT's value. But, most if not all of what we do in IT (development & operations) has a direct impact on the various lines of business.

The biggest problem with large corporations is that the CIOs tend to be people who come from business and not technical backgrounds... These people, for the most part, really don't have the knowledge needed to run a successful IT organization. They also lack the "out-of-box" thinking that's sometimes necessary with IT. CIOs need to empower their technology workers to make the organization more efficient. Furthermore, CIOs don't have proper power to go back to the businesses in most companies to force them to update business practices to get the most out of the infrastructure that's in place. Why is IT always the department that's on the run always re-tooling and re-inventing how they do things? This is something that should happen across all companies, all businesses.

If you are a CIO and your CEO turns to you and says trim the budget and the response is to lay off people and offshore work, you have failed as a manager. Instead of looking at getting rid of all the redundancies (and this includes some staff of course), the thinking is to just start lopping off heads and getting someone cheaper (and less qualified) to do the work. This is a disastrous trend that just keeps happening over and over again.

Most corporations tend to just shoot themselves in the foot with the way IT is managed nowadays. Then again, just the way the corporate world works just tends to be inefficient in all ways... It's time for a the corporate world to wake up to what really ails them (overpaid and completely incapable executives).

I think Mr. Naumann hit the nail right on the head. IT does not generate income for the company; however, it does save the company income by producing applications that are efficient and reduce the amount of time employees must spend using applications that are less than effective or not developed with end users valuable input into the design and functionality.

By providing an intranet and access to the Internet that is reliable and safe, the IT department provides a solid and secure platform from which to operate and conduct business.

Internal support for user issues is another valuable asset provided by the IT department. Imagine having to call in an outside vendor to repair PCs or printers, or install new software...the cost would be astronomical.

So in a word, IT is the rock upon which we build or tear down an organization.

I also agree with Chris' statement that all to often companies and organizations do in fact look to cut costs in their IT departments. This fact is well documented historically.

As an IT project manager, I agree with the assessment in this article that concludes with the idea that making good business decisions never goes out of style but is often lacking in the IT world.

Having earned a business degree before becoming a PM helped me to specialize in understanding how an IT solution with a cost solved a business problem with a cost. I often found that the solution cost was much more than the problem cost.

Being able to understand that relationship and explain it to both IT and business management is an important skill to have -- especially now!

I've been in IT for over 30 years. Nothing has changed in one primary equation: The economic contribution of IT MUST EXCEED the economic burden of IT. Too many IT people do not realize why a company has technology in the first place: to ADD to the bottom line.

I once consulted for a major corporation that only authorized new IT projects based on a reliable projection that the IT project costs would be recovered in one year. Unfortunately, this translated into a 'body count' -- my project was approved based on the fact that we would eliminate seven (7) 'standard' jobs in the accounting dept. Most people in IT must realize that they eliminate other jobs, either by replacing productivity of those jobs or by preventing the need for new jobs.

There are those in IT who are fortunate enough to create value in innovative ways that bring new functionality to corporations and the public, but this group lives in the leading-edge IT software, hardware and service firms and not in the much more populous cubicles of the corporate world.

All IT people would do well to ask, "What is my contribution to the bottom line?" If you think you do not have any influence on that value, I hope you have management that does.

Throwing the axe on the IT department upfront will not solve the problem. I come from a non-IT background and as I understand every business unit generates revenue, provided it is managed efficiently. Building the IT infrastructure out of nothing takes a lot of effort and once things are set up for applications and IT structure, it does spiral into a profit-making engine.

IT support has always been the focus of scrutiny because we are highly paid and don't directly show revenue. And I think a couple of comments have really hit the focus, most of the people who are in charge of IT don't understand the technical side. They make promises that can't be met to the business side because they don't understand the effort required to meet the requirements. And they look for "miracle workers" who can come in and "fix the problems" when the problems really start at the top. I have been working in IT for over 23 years, and I have seen the quality as an aggregate degrade. Management doesn't understand what type of people they need, so they hire smooth talking interviewees who can't actually DO anything. I have worked for quite a few companies who don't ask a single technical question when interviewing for IT positions. They focus on the persons ability to "get along" with their co-workers rather than their ability to "get along" with the work they need to do. The motto is "well you can LEARN technical stuff through training, but you can't learn to get along with people. And that is correct BUT just because someone reads and passes and exam doesn't mean they can effectively do high quality work related to that subject.
So they fill the IT staff with nicely behaving people who can't write a good line of code or manage a good technical project to save their lives. And the IT department turns into a liability rather than an asset. Thus, corporate decides they are just not worth the investment. And in that facade, they probably are not.
Sorry if I sound a bit frustrated, but I have seen so much of this in my career. And it's one of the reasons the IT department has such a hard time proving their benefit to the organization. And one of the first places that senior management looks to either outsource or cut costs.