Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
A professional is a person who successfully achieves practical business results
and contributes to the growth of the industry. A professional should:
- Achieve commitments to his/her customers and company,
- Train and develop subordinates to learn from his/her experience and knowledge,
- Continuously strive to improve his/her own business capability, and
- Be socially responsible and committed to ethical professional standards.
A professional achieves business goals and fulfils customers' requirements
through a combination of appropriate skills. Advanced skills mean great value for
customers, project members, partners and the company. A professional requires not
only high technological skills, but also a high level of personal skills such as
communication, negotiation and leadership, as well as business-related skills to
deliver on this commitment to customers and the company. Moreover, a profes-
sional must to contribute to the training and development of subordinates by serving
as a mentor or coach (IT Skill Standards Centre
2008
).
This definition emphasises the skills a professional should have, cultivate and
share. In fact, the intentional as well as extensional meaning of being “social
responsible” and “committed to ethical professional standards” is not described in
the report or in the relevant governmental documents, whereas the skills necessary
for IT professionals are listed. In addition, well established codes of conduct for IT
professionals such as the “Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional
Practice” (Gotterbarn et al.
1999
) are not well known among Japanese IT
professionals who culturally tend to consider any such written code to be
Tatemae
(only for the sake of courtesy or as a formal sign of respect). Many people consider
IT professional development in Japan to be limited to the maintenance and increase
of a high level of technical skills. What professional development really means in a
Japanese context is for professionals to learn to accept full social responsibility for
their work, with a duty to their employers and customers.
4.3.3.4 Requirement to Nurture Professional IT Human Resources
Providing IT-based solutions to end-user companies has become an important
business for the Japanese IT industry. IT is an enabler of these end-user companies'
successful business processes and they demand effective IT-based solutions. The
quality of IT-based solutions provided to end-user companies is a critical factor in
the quality of products and services they supply. The quality of products and
services provided to their customers determines the quality of the customers'
business activities or the quality of life of the individual customers. Therefore,
ensuring the quality of IT-based solutions is important for both the IT industry and
the end-user companies in maintaining their competitiveness as well as for an
increasingly affluent society.
The provision of quality IT human resources is undoubtedly a key factor in
ensuring the success of effective IT-based solutions. Nurturing highly qualified,
skilled and knowledgeable IT human resources and developing their professional
