For those of you who know me, I have just had to undergo some urgent and unexpected surgery on my neck. The good news is the surgery was a great success. The experience made me reflect on how un-professional much of the IT world is…we do a 2 week “certification” somewhere and brand ourselves “experts”…if you compare this to the medical profession the difference is marked. The surgeon who did my operation had trained for at least 7 years and had 25 years of experience. The nurses who helped during the operation had trained for 3 years and both had upwards of 10 years experience…..I could go on. Now look at your average IT project. Project Managers with no project manager qualifications who are “proud” to know nothing about IT, Business Process “experts” and Architects who have never had to run (never mind define or innovate) a business process and technical experts who have been on a 2 week boot camp…..the above would be a fair description of most of the projects I have seen in the last 2-3 years…is it any wonder that many IT project fail ? It is also not acceptable to claim that “IT is a new industry” - we have been going for 50 years or that “technology changes too fast” – the fundamentals have not changed, we can still only program that which is logical. So what are we to do with IT ? I think it is time that the standards bodies started to get some teeth and put some real effort into creating REAL IT professionals. Not people who have been on a two week course, but people who can demonstrate REAL experience and add REAL value to IT projects. It is time to drive the cowboys and the over paid amateurs out of IT. Time we become a REAL profession. It is for the above reason that I support SDN with its push to create communities of experts – these communities are quick to spot the real experts and even quicker to spot the cowboys….. Specifically I think the BPX community is unique in the IT world today in trying to define a NEW and very important role that I believe will be the key to finally moving IT from its unprofessional ragtag image to a professional, agile and value adding profession. This isn’t going to happen by Enterprise Architects theorising about how IT might look in an ideal world or techies cranking out code that is cool. It is going to happen by people who understand business solving business problems in a smarter way using IT…..this person is the Business Process eXpert (BPX). However you can’t just become a BPX by registering on SDN….you need to have a deep understanding of the fundamentals of your trade and you need to have the experience of applying these to the real world….only once you have been through this apprenticeship can you truly add value as a BPX. But big things always start small….and perhaps SDN-BPX is this start of a REAL IT profession…we have waited long enough.
