Step 1: Mapping Skills
You don’t steer what you don’t know. The first step is to map the skills actually present within the teams: technologies mastered, levels of expertise, certifications, but also interests and career aspirations. This inventory, often formalized in a skills framework, provides an objective view of the IT department’s human capital.
This mapping benefits from going beyond self-report. Cross-referencing employees’ self-assessments with managers’ input and, when possible, concrete situational assessments yields a more faithful picture. The aim isn’t to label people, but to build a factual basis to identify strengths, weaknesses, and the critical skills held by a single person (the famous “points of dependency” at risk).
This exercise also reveals hidden skills: an employee trained in a technology they do not use, an appetite for a high-demand domain. In a context of scarcity, these internal resources are valuable and often underutilized. The mapping forms the foundation for all later training and mobility decisions.
Several frameworks facilitate this work. The European e-CF (European e-Competence Framework) or sector-specific frameworks provide a common language to describe IT skills, sparing each organization from reinventing its own nomenclature. Relying on a recognized framework makes the mapping comparable over time, eases dialogue with HR and training, and structures career paths. Tools (skill-management software, sometimes integrated into the HRIS) help keep this mapping alive rather than letting it stagnate in a quickly obsolete spreadsheet.
Step 2: Identify the Gaps
Once the current state is mapped, it must be confronted with future needs. This involves defining the skills the company will require over the next one to three years, depending on its strategy: cloud migration, AI projects, cybersecurity requirements, application modernization. The alignment of the two reveals the skill gaps.
These gaps are categorized by their criticality and their timeline. Some are urgent and strategic (an indispensable cloud capability for an imminent project); others call for gradual upskilling. This prioritization guides training priorities and helps choose between internal development (upskilling) and external recruitment – knowing that internal development is often faster and more loyal for fillable gaps.
The gap analysis must also take into account the evolution of roles. An employee in a role in decline (due to automation) benefits from being guided toward a high-demand area within the 18- to 24-month window often cited. Anticipating these transitions, rather than letting them happen, turns a risk into an opportunity for internal retraining.
This forward-looking approach requires a prospective view of needs, not merely reactive. Tracking technological trends (rising AI, cloud, security requirements) and translating them into upcoming skill needs allows training to begin before gaps become critical. The most mature organizations embed this watch into their strategic workforce planning, linking the company’s trajectory to the skills it will need to possess – a demanding exercise but one that helps avoid shortages at the worst moment.
Step 3: Build Development Pathways
Closing the gaps requires tailored development pathways that go far beyond one-off training. Effectiveness rests on blending multiple modalities, following the logic commonly summarized by the “70-20-10” model: most learning happens through practice, complemented by interactions and formal training.
- Training (online, in-person, bootcamps) provides the fundamental theoretical knowledge – specialized platforms offer rich catalogs on cloud, cybersecurity, and data.
- Certifications (AWS, Microsoft, Google, cybersecurity certifications) validate skills, motivate employees, and reassure clients and employers.
- Mentoring and peer-to-peer knowledge transfer the know-how and culture, and strengthen team bonds.
- Hands-on practice on real projects, ideally supervised, durably anchors learning – this is the most powerful lever.
These pathways must be personalized: the same objective (advancing in the cloud) does not call for the same route depending on the starting point and each person’s preferred learning style. Allocating dedicated time for training, rather than adding it to an already full workload, is a condition for success too often overlooked.
The collective dimension matters as much as individual paths. Build a learning culture – communities of practice, time set aside for technical discussions, sharing of intelligence, internal hackathons – that spreads skills far beyond formal trainings and strengthens engagement. Some organizations even create an “internal academy” that structures the training offer and elevates in-house experts as trainers. This sharing of knowledge, low-cost, is one of the most effective and durable levers against scarcity.
Step 4: Retain and Measure
Raising skills is itself a powerful lever for retention: offering opportunities for growth and development keeps talent far longer than a simple salary bump. Yet this virtuous circle is only achieved if the training effort is accompanied by recognition – job progression, increased responsibilities, or compensation – otherwise you end up training employees who will be recruited by competitors.
The approach must also be driven by measurement. Several indicators allow assessing its effectiveness: the coverage rate of critical skills, the number of certifications obtained, gaps closed, internal mobility, but also retention rates and team satisfaction. These metrics demonstrate the value of the investment and steer the next efforts.
It is also crucial to measure the real impact, not just activity: not “how many training hours,” but “which skills were actually acquired and applied.” The literature on training confirms positive effects on organizational capabilities, provided that learning translates into practice. Elevating the IT teams is therefore not a one-off project but the establishment of a culture of continuous learning – the only durable answer to an environment where skills evolve constantly. When well managed, this approach turns the constraint of scarcity into internal capability and a competitive advantage.
This content is published by Mentioned
