Digital transformation. We hear about it every day, along with warnings about a growing digital transformation skills gap. Searching on the term yields 58 million results. How might this tidal wave affect the careers of CIOs and technologists? Perhaps more important, what do CIOs and businesses want in future technologists? How might this affect your career?
Preparing for the path forward is a significant part of my work. As a consultant and teacher, I deal with aspiring technologists and graduate students, executives and boards. These groups have diverging expectations of how to succeed in a digital economy.
Summary
Digital transformation success depends less on raw technology and more on delivering business value through customer-centric ways of working and strong human skills. With technical skill half-lives shrinking, CIOs seek T-shaped talent: deep technical expertise plus critical thinking, communication, and business acumen. Agile and Lean practices embody this shift, improving value through transparency, collaboration, and rapid iteration. Companies will import, hire for, or train these capabilities—so technologists and leaders must proactively build them to avoid being left behind.
Where We Have Been
When the software industry was young, detailed specifications were the norm due to hardware and software limitations. Programs took hours to run, and computing power was expensive. That's changed. We have experienced an estimated 1 trillion-fold increase in computing power over the past 60 years. This power is at everyone's disposal.
If everyone has this access, why is digital transformation so hard? To be sure, challenges such as budget limitations, changing technology and legacy systems need to be addressed. Perhaps the challenge also involves the nature of the work, and stakeholder expectations. How might the CIO's expectation be different from that of a Python developer? If graduate students knew what the CEO wanted in future technologists, that information could be invaluable in shaping their education and goals.
Career Success and Business Value
Technologists hope their skills drive their career success. They spend thousands of hours in study and work reinforcing this assumption. The techie's dilemma is that the half-life of their skills is two years. That is, the technical skills they have obtained will be half as valuable or marketable in two years. Technology constantly changes. What is hot today may be a commodity tomorrow.
Most executives and boards speak of the importance of technology business value. The definition of this term varies, but there is always a strong connection to the bottom line. Public companies are driven by shareholder expectations. Private companies are driven to minimize costs and maximize profits. Neither is content with status quo results.
The linkage between technology and business value involves a unique human dynamic. People are involved, and each individual approaches work differently. Some excel in interpersonal interactions, while our Python developer may favor wrestling with code. As a consultant, how is my approach different and perhaps more valuable than that of an employee? Perhaps more important, what skills are future CIOs and technologists going to need, and how can we be ready?
Clues and Trends
Perhaps there are clues in current trends. Over the past 15 years, the software landscape has evolved. Instead of delivering technology projects by writing down detailed specifications before constructing software, technologists and their business partners have found a better way—agile and lean software development. Agile approaches rely on customer-centric approaches to delivering software rapidly. The most popular of these, Scrum, relies on the pillars of transparency, ongoing inspection and adaptation of software under construction. Scrum delivers better business value by dramatically changing the way technology teams interact with software, and (perhaps most important) their customers. Lean software development applies Lean manufacturing practices to software problems, and is an emerging area of customer-centric Agile adoption.
The trend towards Agile and Lean changes the way technologists interact with the business. It also points to something bigger. It is not just about technology. Business value is derived from interactions, analysis, understanding and business acumen embedded in technology teams. Businesses don't want "just technologists." They want people with depth in technology, critical thinking and interpersonal skills. This mix is referred to frequently as T-shaped skills.
In my experience, these skills are responsible for more than half of the required skills companies look for in candidates. The other half involves technology skills. Ignoring their importance jeopardizes companies and careers.
T is the New Norm
If T-shaped skills are what we want, how do we get there? How can companies change their tech teams and train them in the interpersonal skills and patterns consultants use to drive success? How can individual technologists acquire them?
Having taught and written about these skills, I know their adoption does not come easily for technologists. They tend to ignore interpersonal skills, to their detriment. Executives respond by trying some combination of the following:
- Importing these skills by bringing in consultants to drive value
- Hiring them and replacing workers that cannot apply them
- Training workers on these new ways of thinking and approaching work
The need for these skills is not going away. Value creation depends on them, and on their wise use to solve complex business problems in the digital era. For companies and technologists that don't want to get left behind, they are the way forward.
A Call to Action
What are you doing to acquire these skills, and drive value for the business you serve? That is a question for both companies and technologists. The Agile transition is hard for everyone. Asking the question now is preferable to the alternative of being left behind in our digital economy.
Q&A
Question: What do CIOs and businesses want in future technologists?
Answer: They want T-shaped talent—people with deep technical expertise plus strong human skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and business acumen. This blend enables teams to deliver customer-centric outcomes and measurable business value, not just working code.
Question: If computing power is abundant, why is digital transformation still hard?
Answer: Technology alone doesn’t guarantee results. Constraints like budgets, changing tech, and legacy systems matter, but the bigger challenge is human: aligning stakeholder expectations, fostering effective interactions, and integrating business understanding into tech work. Success hinges on ways of working and people skills that translate tech into bottom-line value.
Question: How do Agile and Lean practices improve business value?
Answer: Agile (especially Scrum) emphasizes transparency, continuous inspection, and adaptation, enabling rapid, customer-centric delivery. Lean applies proven manufacturing principles to reduce waste and focus on what customers value. Together, they reshape how technologists collaborate with the business, accelerating learning and improving outcomes.
Question: What does the “half-life” of technical skills mean for careers?
Answer: Technical skills lose market value quickly—about half as valuable in two years—so relying on today’s tools isn’t enough. To stay relevant, technologists should continuously learn while building durable T-shaped capabilities: problem framing, communication, business insight, and collaboration that travel across technologies.
Question: How can organizations and individuals build T-shaped capabilities?
Answer: Companies typically pursue three paths: import them via consultants, hire for them (and replace those who can’t apply them), and train existing staff in new ways of thinking and working. Individuals should intentionally develop interpersonal and business skills alongside technical depth. The need isn’t temporary—these capabilities are essential to creating value in the digital era.
