IBM i continues to support mission-critical operations for organizations across manufacturing, distribution, retail, finance, logistics, and other industries. Its reliability is rarely the problem. The growing challenge is ensuring organizations have the people, knowledge, and development practices needed to support the platform for years to come.
The IBM i skills gap is not simply a hiring issue. It is also a knowledge-transfer, application-design, documentation, integration, and productivity challenge.
Organizations that address these areas together can reduce their dependence on individual experts, make IBM i development more accessible, and create a more sustainable modernization strategy.
What Is the IBM i Skills Gap?
The IBM i skills gap refers to the growing difference between the expertise organizations need and the resources available to support, maintain, integrate, and modernize their IBM i applications.
The challenge can appear in several ways:
- Experienced RPG developers are approaching retirement.
- Critical application knowledge is concentrated among a small number of employees.
- New developers may be unfamiliar with RPG, CL, Db2 for i, or IBM i operations.
- Legacy applications may have limited documentation.
- Older development workflows can make onboarding more difficult.
- Daily maintenance leaves little time for modernization projects.
Hiring additional developers may help, but recruitment alone does not solve the underlying issue. Organizations also need to make their systems easier to understand, integrate, document, test, and maintain.
Why the IBM i Skills Gap Is a Business Risk
IBM i applications often contain decades of valuable business logic. They may determine how an organization prices products, allocates inventory, processes orders, manages production, applies customer terms, or calculates financial results.
When only one or two people understand those processes, the risk extends beyond the IT department.
Potential business impacts include:
- Longer development and support timelines
- Greater dependence on individual employees
- Delayed integration and modernization projects
- Difficulty onboarding new team members
- Higher maintenance costs
- Increased risk when experienced employees leave
A sustainable IBM i strategy should therefore protect both the technology and the knowledge required to operate it.
1. Capture Business Knowledge Before It Leaves
One of the most valuable steps an organization can take is documenting what its applications actually do. Technical documentation is important, but business context matters just as much.
Documentation should explain:
- What business process each program supports
- Which files, tables, programs, and services it depends on
- What inputs and outputs are expected
- Which rules or calculations are business-critical
- Who owns or approves changes to the process
- What downstream systems may be affected
Begin with the applications that create the greatest business risk. A complex order-entry, pricing, billing, inventory, or production program is usually more important to document than an isolated utility with limited impact.
Documentation does not need to be perfect before it becomes useful. A clear overview, dependency map, sample transaction, and list of known exceptions can significantly reduce future uncertainty.
2. Use APIs to Make IBM i Business Logic More Accessible
APIs can help reduce the skills barrier between IBM i applications and the broader technology team.
Instead of requiring every developer to understand the internal structure of an RPG program, a secure API can provide a consistent way to access a defined business function.
An API might provide access to:
- Customer information
- Inventory availability
- Product pricing
- Order creation and status
- Shipment information
- Financial or account data
The underlying IBM i application remains responsible for trusted business logic, while web, mobile, cloud, and analytics developers interact with a documented API.
This creates a cleaner separation between core processing and modern user experiences. It also allows organizations to extend their IBM i applications without requiring every new developer to become an expert in the entire legacy codebase.
Learn more in Building an IBM i API Strategy: A Roadmap for Long-Term Modernization:
3. Modernize the IBM i Developer Experience
Attracting and onboarding developers becomes easier when IBM i development fits more naturally into familiar software-development practices.
Depending on the organization, modernization may include:
- Modern code editors and integrated development environments
- Git-based source control
- Consistent code-review practices
- Automated testing where appropriate
- Repeatable deployment procedures
- Standardized API documentation
- Clear development and security guidelines
These practices do not diminish the value of RPG. They make RPG development more transparent, collaborative, and approachable for a broader group of developers.
A modern developer experience also reduces friction between IBM i teams and colleagues working with web, mobile, cloud, or data platforms.
4. Automate Repetitive Work to Extend Team Capacity
The IBM i skills gap becomes more difficult when experienced employees spend much of their time on repetitive support and maintenance tasks.
Automation can help teams protect limited capacity by reducing manual work in areas such as:
- Order entry and validation
- Inventory synchronization
- File and data transfers
- Customer notifications
- Routine reporting
- Deployment checks
- System monitoring and alerts
APIs allow IBM i applications to exchange information directly with other systems, reducing the need for employees to re-enter data or manage fragile manual processes.
Explore additional examples in IBM i Automation: How APIs Help Eliminate Manual Business Processes:
5. Make IBM i Knowledge Transfer an Ongoing Process
Knowledge transfer should not begin during an employee’s final weeks. It should be a continuous part of team operations.
A practical knowledge-transfer program can include:
- Pairing experienced and developing team members
- Recording application walkthroughs
- Documenting common support scenarios
- Rotating responsibility for important applications
- Reviewing code and business rules as a team
- Creating onboarding exercises using non-production examples
- Maintaining an application ownership matrix
The objective is not simply to preserve source code. It is to preserve the reasoning behind that code: why a rule exists, which exception it handles, and what business outcome it protects.
This context helps new team members make safer changes and reduces the risk of unintentionally disrupting critical operations.
6. Use AI-Assisted Tools Carefully and Practically
AI-assisted development tools are becoming part of the broader IBM i modernization conversation. They may help developers explain unfamiliar code, summarize program flow, draft documentation, identify dependencies, or accelerate routine development tasks.
However, AI-generated output still requires review by people who understand the application, security requirements, and business context.
Organizations evaluating AI-assisted tools should:
- Begin with a limited, low-risk use case.
- Confirm how source code and business data are handled.
- Require human review before accepting generated changes.
- Avoid placing credentials or sensitive information into unapproved tools.
- Measure whether the tool improves documentation, onboarding, or delivery time.
AI can support knowledge transfer, but it should complement—not replace—experienced judgment, secure development practices, and clear accountability.
7. Build a Practical Roadmap for Closing the IBM i Skills Gap
The skills gap cannot be solved through a single project. A phased plan is more realistic and easier to sustain.
Phase 1: Assess
- Identify business-critical applications.
- Document key-person dependencies.
- Review existing development and deployment practices.
- Determine where documentation is incomplete.
Phase 2: Stabilize
- Capture application and business-process knowledge.
- Improve source control and change-management practices.
- Create repeatable onboarding materials.
- Address immediate security or support risks.
Phase 3: Modernize
- Expose high-value business functions through APIs.
- Automate repetitive workflows.
- Adopt modern development tools.
- Improve testing, documentation, and monitoring.
Phase 4: Expand
- Cross-train additional team members.
- Integrate IBM i with cloud and analytics platforms.
- Measure development productivity and support demand.
- Continue reducing individual points of dependency.
How APIs Support a More Sustainable IBM i Team
APIs do not solve every workforce challenge, but they can make IBM i capabilities easier to use, document, secure, and extend.
A well-planned API layer can:
- Make business functions available to more developers
- Reduce direct dependencies on complex legacy interfaces
- Encourage consistent integration patterns
- Support mobile, cloud, web, and analytics initiatives
- Preserve trusted RPG business logic
- Improve documentation and governance
The result is not the elimination of IBM i expertise. It is a more effective way to preserve that expertise and make it available across the organization.
Frequently Asked Questions About the IBM i Skills Gap
What is causing the IBM i skills gap?
The IBM i skills gap is influenced by retirements, limited documentation, concentration of application knowledge, competition for experienced developers, and older development practices that can make onboarding more difficult.
Does closing the IBM i skills gap require replacing RPG?
No. Organizations can preserve RPG applications while improving documentation, adopting modern development tools, creating APIs, automating workflows, and training additional team members.
How can APIs help with IBM i workforce challenges?
APIs provide documented interfaces to IBM i data and business logic. This allows developers working with other technologies to use IBM i capabilities without needing detailed knowledge of every underlying RPG program.
Can AI help document IBM i applications?
AI-assisted tools may help summarize code, identify dependencies, and draft documentation. However, the results should be validated by experienced team members and used within approved security and governance policies.
Where should an organization begin?
Begin by identifying critical applications, key-person dependencies, documentation gaps, and repetitive work. Then prioritize one high-value process for documentation, API enablement, or automation.
Final Thoughts
The IBM i skills gap is a serious challenge, but it is also an opportunity to improve how organizations document, develop, integrate, and manage their most important applications.
By combining knowledge transfer, APIs, modern development practices, automation, and responsible use of AI-assisted tools, IBM i teams can reduce risk and create a more sustainable foundation for future growth.
Modernization is not only about changing technology. It is about making the knowledge and capabilities within IBM i easier for the next generation of employees to understand, use, and extend.