Long before Apple used the letter "i" to help personalize technologies like the iPhone, the iPad and the iMac, the most popular way to prefix innovation was to add an "e" to it.

E-mail, e-commerce, e-business -- after a while the hyphen may go away and we begin to forget the "e" once stood for "electronic." According to some recent research from the DevOps Institute, however, there's a new way to think about a capital "E" that is filled with even more meaning, and which may inform the way we think about the skill sets of developers for years to come.

In its 2020 UpSkilling: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report, the organization published survey results from more than 1,200 IT professionals. The overall results come as little surprise: more than 58% said finding the right talent is difficult and almost as many (48%) said the same thing about keeping talented developers on board.

More interesting was the way the report recommended employers and developers think about the way they assess talent (if you're the one hiring) or presenting your skills (if you're the one applying). It suggested programmers need to showcase themselves as "E-shaped," which is based on the following:

-Three horizontal skill categories including automation skills, functional knowledge skills and technical skills
-Process and framework skills, a vertical skillset which focuses on flow and understanding of different practices and methods such as scrum, agile development and value stream mapping
-A vertical skill category focused on human skills such as collaboration and interpersonal skills.

For those who have been in IT for some time, this might spark memories of a call for "T-shaped skills." First coined by David Guest and later popularized by IDEO CEO Tim Brown, the horizontal bar in the "T" was meant to represent the need for cross-functional skills, which sat atop the more in-depth technical skills an individual would bring to the table.

E-shaped skills (or E-shaped humans, as the DevOps Institute report put it) may be a reflection on how making a meaningful contribution to an organization like a digital transformation project requires greater sophistication and nuance than T-shaped skills allowed. It makes sense to tie process and framework skills, for instance, next to that other vertical bar of collaboration and interpersonal skills, given that DX and similar initiatives bring programmers closer to those in specific lines of business.

The benefits of becoming E-shaped certainly isn't limited to those in formal DevOps roles -- you could easily see how it could help developers at any stage. Getting there isn't going to be easy, however: more than a third of respondents, or 38%, said their organization had no upskilling program in place.

That may leave it up to individuals to find broad-based computer programming courses or develop more specialized skills by looking up Python courses on their own. For the interpersonal and flow-based parts of the "E," it will mean an even greater degree of personal initiative.

As a starting point, I'd suggest developers do a little self-assessment to see how E-shaped they are today, and begin planning accordingly. Remember that, besides offering a short-form for "electronic," the letter "E" marks the beginning of "excellence" too.