In my experience working with IT organisations that are on a path of growth, I have encountered many more who struggle to build all skills in house than those who try to find the right blend of internal and external resources to complement their business priorities. This scramble to be all things to the organisation seems often to come from an overwhelming shortage of well-conceived plans for growth, which in itself is the result of a gap between business capabilities and IT strategy. At an even higher level, this gap can be explained by a lack of alignment among strategy, tactics and corporate values.

This may sound like blaming a traffic jam on global warming, but let me try to explain. Envision the IT manager, standing between her business-minded executive team, and her ever-growing IT resource pool. Every year, the executive hand her a strategic plan, filled with action plans and goals and objectives for the coming fiscal year. Inevitably, her deliverables grow increasingly more complex and increasingly less technology-focused each year, yet her resource pool stays the same. In order to address the current year's priorities, she must find ways to bring new skills and expertise into her team, often in practices and with tools she has yet to fully investigate and understand.

What does she do? Does she take the plan as gospel and blindly staff up to address each new priority and all the changes that follow? Or does she take a minute to assess how these priorities support (or don't support) the organisation's established values, and staff up accordingly?

Let's take a minute to revisit staid business theory: While a company's strategy and tactics may (and should) change regularly in response to internal and external forces and circumstances, a company's values should largely remain the same. These values are the basis on which decisions are made and culture is built. Values help the company define where its strategy must be steered. No matter how much change occurs in strategy, values are the foundation upon which the company is built.

Therefore, the manager could achieve most success by identifying the skills that best support the highest level values, which define the core competencies or differentiators for the company. She would then staff her internal team to create strength around these skills, and identify strong external partners to provide the non-core, specialized skills that are required irregularly and that may change as the external environment (and therefore strategy) changes. Given the cost in both dollars and time of staffing up and investing in resource development, it would be more fiscally responsible to focus those dollars on staff who will strengthen the company's key competitive advantages. Otherwise, the company will end up with a motley crew of staff whose skills may not fit the company's priorities in a year or two. In a regulated workplace such as a unionized environment, this could mean extensive waste in financial and human resources for years to come, as natural attrition occurs at a much slower pace.

The moral of the story? Understand key capabilities for both business and IT, and work hard to communicate and strengthen the linkages between both, then staff accordingly, using external resources surgically to provide specific, time-sensitive expertise. Invest in a small pool of permanent staff who clearly support the corporate values and will help ensure the organisation continues to grow in its stated desired direction over the longer term. Keep your internal team small, agile, and continually well versed in the stated corporate direction so it may grow and shift as business needs arise.