I would describe myself as an IT allrounder, that is my experiences, focus and interests span a number of technical fields including Development, Administration, Support, Infrastructure, Communications, and Management. You’ll find me involved in all these areas and commenting upon them to some degree. Working for an SME, to me, means being an allrounder is vital as, unless your SME company happens to be an IT company, then you’re likely one of the few, if not the only IT person and it’s ‘down to you’. In an SME you don’t get to tell the board “oh, the infrastructure is outside my area I’m an apps guy” as that isn’t going to give you any longevity in you employ. If the board has an IT problem, then whatever it is, you need to have an answer - or at the very least be able to comphrend the problem clearly enough in IT terms to be able to do anything about it it.

In the times when I’ve worked for larger companies the emphasis has always been to pigeon-hole or categorise people to make managing them easier. I’ve often been pushed to decide whether I’m in Application Support or Service Delivery or one of the peripherals groups such as Communication. In fact I remember a few times being excluded from certain sets of “Service Delivery” meetings simply because my ‘designation’ at the time was “Technical Project Management”. Of course choice words in the right ears can tend to break these sorts of metaphysical barriers down. It’s no one’s fault in particular because everyone wants nice clear cut edges to manage - the only problem is that there can be awful lot of unnecessary red tape that builds up from time to time.

The benefit I have always had being an IT allrounder is that I’ve been able to act proactively in discussions on various subject matters and have been able to make judgements, plans and recommendations whilst also being able to carry them out. Being an allrounder also gives you the enviable position of taking the (buzz word alert) “helicopter view” and seeing how all the various discrete components of a proposed system should work together.

In some companies being an allrounder can get you looked at as if you’re some kind of “loose cannon” or non-conformist but it doesn’t mean you’re any less technologically aware than a specialist. At the end of the day the comparable quality of an allrounder versus the specicialist can never be decided by a one to one comparison or 20 question challenge - it is more down to the invidual themselves and how they apply themselves and embrace the technologies. Some people I have met, like me live and breathe IT, whilst other I have met describe themself as being “IT during the day but want nothing to do with it when they punch out at 5pm”.