Critical Skills of IS Professionals: A Model for Curriculum Development

Executive Summary In the rapidly changing field of Information Systems, educational programs must be continually reevaluated and revised. This can be a daunting task. To make this process more manageable and to create programs that more accurately reflect the demands of the marketplace, a curriculum revision process is presented. As part of the curriculum revision process, a study was conducted to determine the expected skills and knowledge required for Information Systems professionals in three general staffing groups: programmers, analysts, and end-user support. A survey instrument was developed asking respondents to rate the importance of each knowledge/skill area three years from now for each of the staffing groups. The results show that Information Systems knowledge relating to the entire organization and overall business knowledge will be important with less emphasis on advanced IS applications. The so-called ‘soft skills’ such as teamwork and collaboration, planning and leading projects, presentation delivery, and writing skills will be critical for success in the Information Systems profession. More importance will be placed on web-based languages rather than more traditional languages such as COBOL. Based on the analysis, a skills matrix is presented that can be used as a foundation for developing courses. This paper also describes a curriculum development model that can be used as a guide for curriculum revision.