I think I'm in a similar situation and I have a question:
how does one switch careers to Lean, ITIL or CMMI without necessary experience under his belt?
0. Buy and read books, read blogs, watch youtube videos, whatever, and gain as much knowledge as you can, on whatever field you decide to pursue (Lean, Six Sigma, Agile, CMMI, whatever.)
1. Take a class (or classes) on your new endeavour. Any kind of introduction to the topic that's something you can document and put on your resume is a start.
2. Get some sort of certification in that field, if you can afford it. Yeah, I know certifications are of dubious value, but it's better than nothing (usually) and some firms actually place a lot of stock in that sort of thing. Just don't think of certifications as a "magic bullet" but rather as just another arrow in your quiver.
3. Now may have a to cheat a little bit. What I mean is... if your current job doesn't involve using, say, Six Sigma, start by learning as much as you can. See above. Then start talking about it at work, have a hallway conversation with your boss if nothing else. Try to legitimately wrangle a way to redefine your current job to include some element of that ("Boss, can we apply Six Sigma techniques to managing $SOMETHING?"). Ideally he/she says yes, and now you can legitimately list experience with that topic... but if not, just keep talking about it, write some reports on it and send them to people, and then - when talking about your old job - mention how you "spearheaded an initiative to implement Six Sigma, blah, blah, blah..."
And from here, you just working to fight your way into a new job doing your chosen $WHATEVER, by hook or by crook.
One other little note about the above... your current boss might not be to eager to let you totally redefine your current job, but - assuming your doing a good job already and aren't considered a slacker / loser - you can usually get away with asking to do something extra. Take advantage of that to squirm your way into whatever new thing it is you want to do. You may have to jump ship to a new job to complete the switcheroo, but the initial goal is just to get a beachhead.
I think the fastest route into project management can be had through the business analyst role. Basically if you're already on top of the requirements, work with the customers well, manage your own work well, report risky/unclear areas quickly and can manage the technical people to clear them up fast... you're practically project managing already.
I've rarely ran into good business analysts. They are often failed developers, because they lack the right mindset. But if you are smart and think technical, just don't enjoy the programming, you'll quickly become one of the best BA's around... and then you'll get promoted! And all will lament the loss :P
If you don't mind...
Could you elaborate a bit what do you mean by saying "[...]they lack the right mindset" ? What is the "right mindset" for developer?
I think you have to think logically and be able to make cognitive jumps.
For example realising that process A must be rolled back if midway though - therefore it is essentially an atomic transaction with all that entails. Or that the user opening a bunch of spreadsheets for a specific piece of data to fill in another form, is really just a key-value pair lookup on a relatively static dataset.
Bad business analysts I've encountered fail to understand the core process they are designing around, or take the user's explanation as gospel, even when there are gaping holes in the logic. They often define processes which to a developer are a simple problem that has been solved in many situations, in a completely odd way, where they have failed to make a conceptual leap from the problem they are solving, to one solved in other parts of the same system.
This recipe should be called "3 easy steps to become Six Sigma consultant".
You could even write an ebook and sell it on the internet :)
On a serious note - I think the pattern is clear and it could be replicated successfully on different areas of life.
Thank you for taking your time to present it here.
You're implying that it's written in the first person, but you're missing the gif of the entrepreneur character's signature at the bottom right above the paypal button :)
6) Quality of technological innovation in Australia in general.
7) General contempt for civil rights displayed by political parties in Australia.
8) Apathy disguised as being laid back.
9) Hot weather.
10) Sun.
I like;
1) Low cost of living.
2) Very low marginal tax rate.
3) High quality of internet access, almost ubiquitous wifi access.
4) One of the highest populations of atheist people in Europe.
5) Largest political party majority ideology is classical liberalism.
6) One of the most advanced technological infrastructure programs in Europe.
7) Straightforward no bullshit populace.
8) Very cold weather.
9) Very little sun.
All of that said, you can never really know until you've actually tried it a while, so start February I'm moving to Tallinn for a three month trial, in the event that it wasn't for me was planning on coming back to Sydney but in light of these new developments and a continuing frustration / annoyance with associated events, I think if Tallinn doesn't work out I'll just pick some place else, I have a pretty big laundry list to go through. :)
From what I've heard from a friend who has already moved over there, English is fine for Tallinn (the capital). That said, if I do end up making the move permanent, I'd want to learn the language fluently regardless.
Actually I'd prefer to assist a local consultancy, I've been looking at Aqris as they were listed on the grails development firms list and seem like a good place to work, but in the event that I'm unable to find some place to work over there already I can happily live off remote contracted consulting work from existing clients after I leave my full-time position end of January 2010.
Might even give me some time to actually build something of my own if I can outsource the sales / marketing aspects I'm not so hot at.
If you want real integration possibilities, look at Yate too. It's got a bit steeper learning curve, but seeing the whole PBX as lots of completely independent modules and the core as a message synchronisation engine only is very refreshing. After having fun with all three solutions, Yate is my favourite (even if it has a much smaller development group and community currently - these guys are serious about what they do).
You can also integrate with everything, because the external module interface is a simple text protocol (no - a sane one - not sip kind of simple). Use php, perl, bash, python, java, etc. as you want - helper libraries are provided.
You're asking the wrong person. I was the creative/mkting director... but also, the startup began in 2005 and died in late 2007-ish. AFAIK, there were not very many scalable solutions for a gaming platform when we first started. But again, I'm not the right person to ask about this. :)
I read somewhere that at least 30% of all jobs ads in UK is fake ... I don't know if it's true or not ...
How do you tell the difference between fake job ad and real thing?
I've experienced the same thing in New Zealand, and more recently in Prague .. 'Place holder' advertisements created by recruiters just to get you into their database.
