Mainframe Skills Shortage: It's not just a technical problem.

The imminent retirement of the mainframe old timers and the lack of fresh young blood coming through is testing the IT departments of Enterprises all over the world. What they are realising is that it is not just a technical expertise problem. Many of these mainframe specialists, particularly those working in application development, will have built up a huge functional knowledge. This functional system knowledge will have built up from all the estimating, writing of High Level and Technical designs, fixing problems, component Integration testing and all the other tasks they have been involved with in their mainframe career.

If you stop and think about it, it could be this knowledge that is more important than the technical expertise. Mainframe technical expertise can be bought, it may cost more in the future, but if you pay the right price you will probably get it. It is the disappearance of the functional knowledge of your mainframe business systems that will give you the biggest headaches.

What becomes clear is that it must be addressed now, before its too late. A coordinated approach to knowledge transfer must be developed which may require changes to the current documentation regime. It may be necessary, if it does not exist currently, to get a new swathe of functional knowledge documentation written up, that will be suitable for new starters to get a grip of the system fundamentals. A strategy for keeping it up to date must be devised as well. Updates to this extra layer of knowledge documentation may have to become a deliverable when implementing system changes. Some Companies have introduced knowledge Intranets and certainly a web based solution to knowledge transfer is worth considering with powerful search capabilities and possibilities for interaction.

Other ideas businesses are trying, other than overhauling their KT documentation, include:
Rehiring newly retired mainframers as part time home based consultants
Giving younger staff more work outside of their immediate functional comfort zone. This can bring a number of benefits if done carefully with adequate support, including, increased job satisfaction with more challenges, a culture of ‘can do’ and mutual support, prevention of pigeon holing staff and over reliance on key ‘experts’.

If you have not started taking a serious look at this problem yet then get onto it quick ! The mainframe is not going away, and the advent of the new architectures – particularly Service Oriented Architecture, and the new technical innovations such as Virtualisation, Hipersockets, Ziip chips, zAAP, Integrated Facilities for Linux (zLinux), really mean the mainframe has a solid future in Enterprise IT strategies.

For more on the mainframe skills shortage read :
Mainframe Skills Shortage – Train Your Way Out
The Dinosaur Myth: Mainframe Behemoths Aren't Dead Yet
Shortage of mainframe skills may give IT execs gray hairs
IBM Scholars zSeries Program
IT skills crisis looms - and outsourcing won't help

William Hoffman
http://www.mainframe-upgrade.com/