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Value of General IT Knowledge

Terry Critchley

If you watch enough Western films (cowboys etc.), you will have come across a mountain man, henceforth called "M." This rugged person lived in the mountainous areas of the USA and made his living by obtaining animal pelts to sell to the fashionable ladies in the East.

M was the master of his territory and knew enough about the flora, fauna and geology of the land to know what to eat and what not to eat, steer clear of the wild animals, trap them and to avoid falling into holes or off cliffs. He also knew the weather patterns very well.

There were botanists, naturalists and geologists who visited these mountain areas for study purposes and their knowledge far exceeded that of M in their respective areas of study, although they did not know the territory’s geography and weather vagaries as well as M.

In their diverse studies at various times, the flora expert fell off a cliff, the geologist was poisoned by a plant and the fauna expert died of cold on their respective expeditions. M found them and gave them each a decent burial, with the usual two wooden sticks tied in the shape of a cross on their graves. He also said the few words from the bible over each grave.

So, what has this to do with it IT, I hear you ask? Everything is the answer. The flora, fauna and geology people represent specialists without a general underpinning knowledge of the IT "territory." The vagaries of the weather, the abundance of animals and plants represent the jobs in IT. The jobs "mutate," like the weather changes, and other perils lurk in areas of knowledge outside their own.

The visitors would have been sensible to ask M to accompany then on their visits or study the territory and its "contents" well before embarking on their, ultimately fatal, expeditions. It never ceases to amaze me when I examine the curricula of specialist courses that there are either no prerequisites, or very minor ones, just as M felt when he saw these "dudes" on his territory. The IT equivalents of these deaths is the 70% failure rate of IT projects.

Cybersecurity

It never ceases to amaze me when I examine the curricula of specialist courses that there are either no prerequisites, or very minor ones. I feel that that the analogy above makes the case for having general IT knowledge, even for someone who wishes to specialize in an area of IT, such as Cybersecurity or Cloud computing.

I have seen an advertisement for a cybersecurity course along the lines; "Become a cybersecurity expert in 16 hours with our course; $99, was $299," followed by the story of an accountant who took it an became an expert. This is La La Land, and may explain the fact that the "bad guys" seem to have the upper hand.

Image
Critchley

Figure 1: Cybersecurity: All These Areas are Vulnerable

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is data center computing on steroids, the latter environment dragging people into the general work and knowledge that surrounds that computing environment, giving them a broader knowledge of it. It is advantageous to learn about that environment before entering it, is it not?

Image
Critchley

Figure 2: The Cloud Computing Ecosphere Scope

It should be self-evident that this environment, whatever role one has, that a broad knowledge of its composite nature is necessary to succeed.

Application Development

School computer education, and to some extent University, suggest that computing is about coding (in Python) and computational thinking. What one is supposed to be thinking about is not made clear. 

The application development environment comprises (among other things):

  • Coding in one or more languages
  • Security aspects of applications
  • The whole process of design/ code/test/recode, often called CI/CD – continuous improvement/continuous deployment
  • Methodologies – agile, scrum, DevOps, DevSecOps and others
  • Project management, milestones, reviews and other controls

Incidentally, "test" in the diagram above is not a single item but includes unit tests, integration tests and functional tests and there may be other tests depending on the work in hand, up to 16 in fact. 

Image
Critchley

In short, development is much, much more than coding, which may come as a surprise to many people and organizations. Remember also, that "development" is only part of the IT application ecosphere.

Summary

Long experience in IT, both at the coal face, in the trenches, researching and writing about IT leads me to the conclusion that there is a need for a form of general IT education outside anything on offer today. The latter comprises mainly computer science (CS), "IT Fundamentals," specialisms and "boot camps."

None of these cover the IT terrain which characterizes modern workplace IT, which has always evolved and which today is seeing a tectonic shift caused by AI (artificial intelligence) and its derivatives. One will look in vain for coverage of high performance and mainframe computing, graphics. IoT, edge computing and key methodologies which make IT projects tick.

It is time for a change.

Download the full paper: The Case for General Information Technology Training

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AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...

Value of General IT Knowledge

Terry Critchley

If you watch enough Western films (cowboys etc.), you will have come across a mountain man, henceforth called "M." This rugged person lived in the mountainous areas of the USA and made his living by obtaining animal pelts to sell to the fashionable ladies in the East.

M was the master of his territory and knew enough about the flora, fauna and geology of the land to know what to eat and what not to eat, steer clear of the wild animals, trap them and to avoid falling into holes or off cliffs. He also knew the weather patterns very well.

There were botanists, naturalists and geologists who visited these mountain areas for study purposes and their knowledge far exceeded that of M in their respective areas of study, although they did not know the territory’s geography and weather vagaries as well as M.

In their diverse studies at various times, the flora expert fell off a cliff, the geologist was poisoned by a plant and the fauna expert died of cold on their respective expeditions. M found them and gave them each a decent burial, with the usual two wooden sticks tied in the shape of a cross on their graves. He also said the few words from the bible over each grave.

So, what has this to do with it IT, I hear you ask? Everything is the answer. The flora, fauna and geology people represent specialists without a general underpinning knowledge of the IT "territory." The vagaries of the weather, the abundance of animals and plants represent the jobs in IT. The jobs "mutate," like the weather changes, and other perils lurk in areas of knowledge outside their own.

The visitors would have been sensible to ask M to accompany then on their visits or study the territory and its "contents" well before embarking on their, ultimately fatal, expeditions. It never ceases to amaze me when I examine the curricula of specialist courses that there are either no prerequisites, or very minor ones, just as M felt when he saw these "dudes" on his territory. The IT equivalents of these deaths is the 70% failure rate of IT projects.

Cybersecurity

It never ceases to amaze me when I examine the curricula of specialist courses that there are either no prerequisites, or very minor ones. I feel that that the analogy above makes the case for having general IT knowledge, even for someone who wishes to specialize in an area of IT, such as Cybersecurity or Cloud computing.

I have seen an advertisement for a cybersecurity course along the lines; "Become a cybersecurity expert in 16 hours with our course; $99, was $299," followed by the story of an accountant who took it an became an expert. This is La La Land, and may explain the fact that the "bad guys" seem to have the upper hand.

Image
Critchley

Figure 1: Cybersecurity: All These Areas are Vulnerable

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is data center computing on steroids, the latter environment dragging people into the general work and knowledge that surrounds that computing environment, giving them a broader knowledge of it. It is advantageous to learn about that environment before entering it, is it not?

Image
Critchley

Figure 2: The Cloud Computing Ecosphere Scope

It should be self-evident that this environment, whatever role one has, that a broad knowledge of its composite nature is necessary to succeed.

Application Development

School computer education, and to some extent University, suggest that computing is about coding (in Python) and computational thinking. What one is supposed to be thinking about is not made clear. 

The application development environment comprises (among other things):

  • Coding in one or more languages
  • Security aspects of applications
  • The whole process of design/ code/test/recode, often called CI/CD – continuous improvement/continuous deployment
  • Methodologies – agile, scrum, DevOps, DevSecOps and others
  • Project management, milestones, reviews and other controls

Incidentally, "test" in the diagram above is not a single item but includes unit tests, integration tests and functional tests and there may be other tests depending on the work in hand, up to 16 in fact. 

Image
Critchley

In short, development is much, much more than coding, which may come as a surprise to many people and organizations. Remember also, that "development" is only part of the IT application ecosphere.

Summary

Long experience in IT, both at the coal face, in the trenches, researching and writing about IT leads me to the conclusion that there is a need for a form of general IT education outside anything on offer today. The latter comprises mainly computer science (CS), "IT Fundamentals," specialisms and "boot camps."

None of these cover the IT terrain which characterizes modern workplace IT, which has always evolved and which today is seeing a tectonic shift caused by AI (artificial intelligence) and its derivatives. One will look in vain for coverage of high performance and mainframe computing, graphics. IoT, edge computing and key methodologies which make IT projects tick.

It is time for a change.

Download the full paper: The Case for General Information Technology Training

Hot Topics

The Latest

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...