Types of Technical IT Professionals

Relationships among Impact, Urgency, and Priority in the context of Change Management

Impact: Impact is a measure of the effect the change can cause on business.  It is determined by the expected loss in business value.

Urgency: Urgency is a measure of the situation, condition, or state that dictates how fast the execution of the change is required. It is influenced by the impact along with other factors.

Priority: Priority is a measure of the precedence given to the execution of the change.  Usually, it is automatically assigned according to the values considered for Impact and Urgency (Figure 01).

Figure 01: Priority based on Impact and Urgency

Identifying True Skill Set for an IT Employee

Sometimes, an employee holding an IT title given by a non-technical manager may not have the required qualifications for the title.  In other times, vendor or product-based (e.g., Basis Administrator by SAP, ArcSDE Administrator for ESRI's ArcSDE product etc.) title may hide the qualifications found in standard IT titles.  In both cases, the following or similar steps may help identify the true skill set for an IT employee:

1. What are the MAJOR software, tools, and/or programming languages you use for your everyday work?
2. What are the MAJOR underlying hardware and/or software technologies used for the items identified in Step 1?
3. Do you NATIVELY work with most aspects of the items identified in Step 2 (if yes, list the items)?
4. What are the IT services your work DIRECTLY dependent on and/or affected by and you do NOT have control over?
5. What is the broad IT function MOST of your knowledge, experience, and/or skills fall under?