Alessio Alionço, the founder and CEO of Pipefy, a global leader in AI-driven workflow automation solutions, believes that limiting the IT team ultimately limits the business. As IT teams take on more responsibilities, such as managing day-to-day operations and overseeing digital transformation efforts, their finite resources can create challenges. Recruitment and retention are top concerns for tech companies, with a projected global shortage of over 85 million tech workers by 2030.
The pressure on IT teams is further exacerbated by growing IT backlogs, complex legacy systems, and uncontrolled stack sprawl. Potential scarcity in the IT talent pool poses risks of burnout and intense competition for talent, which could impact businesses that rely heavily on IT for their operations and growth strategies. Moreover, businesses now expect IT teams to contribute to cost containment, business growth efforts, efficiency gains, security, governance, and more.
Two significant challenges identified by Alionço include data visibility issues due to complex tech stacks and the frustration caused by business teams depending on IT for optimizations and automations. This often leads to sanctioned workarounds, or shadow IT, as business teams wait for their requests to be addressed in the IT backlog. Ad hoc solutions could introduce visibility, governance, and security risks, which is why empowering business teams and building strong partnerships between IT and business teams is crucial.
To build a future-proof IT team, Alionço suggests seven strategies for IT leaders: empowering business teams, conducting a gap analysis for recruiting, mentoring the next generation of leaders, focusing on talent retention and development, adapting team structures, nurturing a strong team culture, and implementing scalable processes and tools. By utilizing no-code and low-code tools like those offered by Pipefy, businesses can empower non-technical users and business teams to adapt their workflows without overwhelming the IT team with change requests.
The IT team of the future will need resilience and bandwidth to handle the increasing demands of digital transformation and complex tech stacks. Collaborative partnerships between IT and business teams will be essential to ensure there are no limits on IT that impede business growth. By adopting strategies such as empowering business teams, focusing on talent retention and development, and implementing scalable processes and tools, IT leaders can prepare their teams for the challenges ahead and support their businesses in the long term.
