Taking techies to their limits

Waking up in the morning and looking forward to getting back to the technical challenges of your work is one of the most potent sources of job satisfaction. For technologists, that means intricate projects that amaze and awe.

The respect and appreciation from the business side for information technology's contribution to success are what employers with hot projects offer their IT staffs.

"Your Web site is only as good as the product that ends up inside the customer's house," says Roseann Lucas, a technical delivery project manager at Electronic Data Systems Corp. in Des Moines, Iowa. "We want to be the engine that's powering the action behind the scenes of the glamour of the Web site." Lucas says her team intends to have a new order-management system available by late summer or early fall to clients who sell merchandise online or through catalogs.

"It gives them the capability to interact with the end consumer online and in real time, through a consumer response or call center as well as in the e-commerce realm," Lucas explains.

Being part of that kind of technology, taking it to its limits and gliding on to the next generation attracts the top talent and keeps them happy. Vendors like EDS, Intel Corp. and NCR Corp. - all on the list of Best Places for Hot Projects - are in the business of staying on the bleeding edge, creating the technology that industry runs on.

Lucas joined EDS's 80,000 IT employees via an acquisition in 1991. Since then, she has made her way through a variety of projects in what Dan Ward, director of organizational resource planning, describes as a matrix, or lattice, of job opportunities.

At Plano, Texas-based EDS, IT professionals can find out what skills they need to join a particular team, get the training and let the company know when they're ready to move ahead. "When you meet the criteria, you move up," says Lucas. "You choose when you are ready."

Technologists are also taking their place at the table for business-management decisions. With a full appreciation for the importance of technology issues comes greater opportunities for IT to participate on the business side.

Rapid Deployment

Intel's IT staff had to be ready when its e-commerce investment went from zero to $1 billion per month in six months. "It's a combination of really smart people, disciplined management, a strong team ethic, the ability to apply resources where we need them and a culture that lets people switch gears rapidly," says Doug Busch, Intel's vice president of IT.

At Intel, IT is consulting on new projects like virtual private networking, load balancing and Secure Sockets Layer acceleration products for e-commerce. The close connection to Intel's business strategy gives IT constant feedback on how the products impact Intel's ability to deliver in the marketplace.

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