To build a satisfying career in business in the 2020s, managers and tech professionals need to not only be fluent in the tools and platforms, but also understand the end results their customers are seeing. It doesn’t matter how complex your organization is – even the largest aerospace company in the world requires a holistic view of the business. “In the IT sector, we have a unique view of how corporate performance affects every aspect of the business,” he said. Susan DonizChief information officer and senior vice president of information technology and data analytics at The Boeing Company.
In this Q&A, Doniz urges tech professionals who are extremely curious about their businesses, keep thinking about ways to continuously improve things, and very importantly, continue to hone and refresh their own skills and prospects:
Susan Doniz, IT Lead, Boeing Company
Photo: Boeing Company
Q: What kinds of skills should today’s IT professionals work to develop?
Doniz: Of course the cloud, analytics and programming languages, as well as learning the next programming language is very important. But I think the most important thing for an IT professional, or any professional, is to be a constant learner. This means continuously improving your coding skills, staying on top of whatever your area of expertise is, and becoming well-rounded.
The other important thing is to understand the business you support. If you’re a consumer or retailer, understanding how people buy is an important skill set. Or if, like me, your job supports the airline and all the great components that keep the biggest exporter in the US running smoothly, it’s important to know how to make the airline’s business work. work becomes easier and how to improve production and factory processes.
We have to care about why sustainability, supply chains and innovation are so important. Be curious about your business, about what’s coming next, and how your work can help enable it. If you find the intersection between your work as an IT professional and the user experience, you will do better at your job and make yourself better at the same time.
Q: How have IT skills requirements evolved with the rise of cloud computing and digital transformation
Doniz: Much of the routine, easier work has been automated. Before, you had to really understand the system and perform basic tasks. More automation means that developers and those working in technology today and in the future, there will be a more complex ecosystem to work with and more complex problems to solve. decide. This is why you have to solve who will use what you develop, and hone the latest development capabilities to use those cases so you get the best quality code possible. .
More and more DevSecOps research teams and product models, which means that if you don’t develop good code, you will support it when it breaks and the code tends to break at real times. inconvenience during the day. It’s exciting to see our teams tackle these complex challenges, and it’s exciting because it means there’s always more important work to be done – it never gets boring.
Q; Are there specific job roles or skills that will be replaced by automation, AI, or low/no code?
Doniz: I believe that automation or AI will really enhance the human factor in IT. In fact, the emergence of this technology has the power to create jobs. For example, data scientists or usability and design professionals didn’t exist 10 years ago as they do today. Now see how important they are to any company focused on innovation and improvement.
New automation creates opportunities and spaces for good programmers and good developers to focus on high-quality work. What automation and AI allows you to do is automate on a large scale what a good developer or programmer would do one by one, so it may take a while for you. for one program, you can now do it for hundreds of programs in the same amount of time, so it’s about scaling and enhancing the best practices and doing it as fast as possible. . It also allows you to fail quickly so you can test things and scale them faster.
Q: Are there roles or skills that will become more prominent as lower level quests are replaced?
Doniz: My goal is for my teammates at Boeing to focus on delivering strategic solutions across the enterprise regardless of the mission. Learn how to be a good scientist and storyteller. You need to discover what the data is telling you and be able to interpret it in a way that people will understand. Part of your job is to hypothesize. With new technology, you can run tests faster and tweak your theory so you can find solutions faster and deliver better quality products and services to our business partners. me.
Q: Please offer advice to IT professionals looking to upskill in management.
Doniz: You won’t finish if you just want to move up the ladder. Find your passion and where you excel, and make sure you surround yourself with people who will make you a better leader and a better person in general. Focus first on where you are – the people around you, the process you’re supporting, and how you’ll deliver value – the rest will come.
In IT, we have a unique view of how corporate performance affects every aspect of the business. So, if we’re backing it financially, how do you allow your business partner to meet their bottom line while shipping to their customers? In the supply chain, how can you efficiently transport products and parts so that your business meets your needs? Understand how things work and then how you can help improve it. Driving improvement, doing it quickly, and working well with others is your ticket to the top.
