Christian ponders the impact of technology innovation and new collaboration approaches on the IT workforce. He suggests three main changes: more Business Analysts (per my book, Collaboration Roadmap, this would be about business engagement), increased reliance on cloud-based services, and a higher focus on user adoption. On the last issue Christian writes:

“By shifting the focus of resources away from the hardware and toward the business, organizations will get more value out of their existing investments. One of the real concerns of the rapid growth of the platform was that many large customers who had made huge investments were not fully deploying the platform. One definite result of this gap between increased productivity and decreased resource investment has been the focus on user adoption. Stakeholders want to know that value is being received before approving additional investment.“

I’ve got a book on that topic too. If you are heading to Share 2012 in Atlanta next month, I’m presenting a full-day workshop on user adoption strategies for SharePoint. It’s not too late to sign up.