Systems analyst activities and skills in the new millennium

The nature of systems development has continued to undergo change as new technologies emerge and impact the environment in which systems must function. A nationwide survey of systems analysts was conducted to assess what tasks are most important, what skills are most important in completing the tasks, and how the tasks and skills needed may have changed over the last decade. The most important tasks were those associated with traditional systems development, namely defining system scope, objectives, system requirements, as well as assessing the impact of systems and evaluating their performance. Analytical skills were considered the most important skills overall, followed by technical and communication skills. The least important skills overall were interpersonal skills. When compared to results from a similar survey conducted in the early 1990s, the data from the present study revealed that while the most important tasks remained relatively unchanged, a number of shifts occurred in other aspects of the systems analyst's work that reflect changes in the technological environment.