Dear Mr. CIO

I recently read of a disturbing trend: nationally, only 1.5% of incoming college freshmen major in Computer Science.  Incredulous, I reached out to a colleague at a local university. He confirmed that, at his institution, the figure was actually less than 1%.  Meanwhile, thousands of software development jobs are shipped overseas, to India and to Russia.

A future crisis is not difficult to imagine:  in a year or two, or five, who will write the code?  And by code I don’t mean the design of web pages or mobile device apps, I mean the business logic that actually drives our business processes (and inhibits them when it’s lacking).

I believe that business users understand their problems, and in most cases understand what’s needed to solve them.  If they also had at their disposal the resources to devise and implement solutions, then many of their problems would be short-lived. I characterize this problem solving activity as Tactical Development, that is, business users building software to address the many short-comings of today’s business systems, short-comings that keep them from realizing their goals.

Tactical Development is already going on to varying degrees in operational departments of businesses across America, and is often critical to the efficacy of business applications.  But business needs more and better tactical developers, and it needs to acknowledge the important role that tactical developers play and to support their efforts.

May I ask, sir, how supportive are you of the tactical developer?  Would you know one if you saw one?

Please consider.

Thanks,

TacDev1