I guess today’s popular trends, ‘Web 2.0′ and ‘Enterprise 2.0′ are all about people slowly realizing there’s much more to software than constant ‘no can do’ excuses and bureaucracy of IT departments.

Even the infrastructure maintenance role they provide to the organization is becoming less important with advances in hardware. I envision 10-15 years from now having IT department role merging with building maintenance. Every large company employs electricians, and in the same way it will employ IT maintainers.

Producing easy to use software requires completely different skill set than an average IT department has. It will probably take the next generation of management to realize this and make the necessary transition. Today’s management is too invested into the current, central role of IT department.

Do you know what your description reminds me of? The rise and fall of the architects’ profession.

There was a time, not so long ago, that if you needed to build anything (buildings, I mean) you had to start by appointing an architect. seeing as how they drafted the plans for the building, it was also assumed that they were in a good position to run the whole building project. Then without warning, along came a new breed: Planning Engineers.

Two good links:
Planning Engineers Organisation and
Mace

With the appearance of Planning Engineers, it took about two seconds for everyone to realize just how crap architects had been doing at delivering projects on time/budget, and how they had been hiding it for decades. The new kids on the block really knew how to manage construction projects, and how to understand what their clients wanted – within less another decade they totally pulled the carpet out from under the architects’ feet (laughing all the way to the bank, incidently).

Getting back to the IT-preventers, I think you are right on the button – they are just like the architects were ten years or so back. Question is though, where is the disruptive force going to come from to pull the rug from under them? I would suggest that it might not be like architects’ collapse at all, but will be more like Skype’s disruption of the long-distance telephone industry: Users will just vote with their feet and start adopting alternative (i.e., user-friendly) tools that don’t need a nerd to make them work. They will go around the IT-preventers.

My biggest concern (now I think of it) is that once the shit hits the fan for the IT guys/girls, those very same people will move sideways into another ‘let’s have a go at this’ career path. Please don’t let it be into my back yard!