Oh bother

[SimonMac]

"suityou01 is never on the bench" - We either need to rep you up a lot or down a lot.

[original PM]

Just a standard agile practitioner pass really

scrum can be useful --- however mainly I would look for experience of delivery......

if you ain't got that try for PMO roles and put yorself about a bit

[Mich the Tester]

oh and actually given you have a coding background Agile may be a better option.

Indeed. Agile's killing off the Prince II/ITIL/ISTQB/TMap/SDM/Waterfall/BiSl bulltulip; it's about people with real skills building stuff that customers need, and not about management overhead.

I think these days professions can rise, thrive, decline and become obsolete in the space of 20 or 30 years; I think that testing as a craft, as opposed to testing as a role that everyone should to, is dying. I think it's a shame, because I really believe a good tester has a lot to offer projects, but reality is that the market is moving away from the idea of testing as a seperate profession, so it's time to re-train. Seeing as I think it's going to be difficult to keep learning new techietools as I get older, I'm studying for the RSS Statistics qualifications; I'd love to believe I can reach my pension as a tester, but I won't. Seeing as my talent for coding is pretty minimal, I need to learn something that will last. I suggest others who've been in IT a longish time consider their talents and look at (continually) retraining to get through the next 20-odd years.

[DimPrawn]

Indeed. Agile's killing off the Prince II/ITIL/ISTQB/TMap/SDM/Waterfall/BiSl bulltulip; it's about people with real skills building stuff that customers need, and not about management overhead.

I think these days professions can rise, thrive, decline and become obsolete in the space of 20 or 30 years; I think that testing as a craft, as opposed to testing as a role that everyone should to, is dying. I think it's a shame, because I really believe a good tester has a lot to offer projects, but reality is that the market is moving away from the idea of testing as a seperate profession, so it's time to re-train. Seeing as I think it's going to be difficult to keep learning new techietools as I get older, I'm studying for the RSS Statistics qualifications; I'd love to believe I can reach my pension as a tester, but I won't. Seeing as my talent for coding is pretty minimal, I need to learn something that will last. I suggest others who've been in IT a longish time consider their talents and look at (continually) retraining to get through the next 20-odd years.

I thought it went, learn IT when young, build massive BTL portfolio with cheap debt, retire early a property millionaire.

[Mich the Tester]

I thought it went, learn IT when young, build massive BTL portfolio with cheap debt, retire early a property millionaire.

It did go that way for a while. Not any more.

[suityou01]

I know we have had our digs in the past you bedwetting cretin (only joking) but could your problem be that as a contractor you need to me a master on what you do, rather than a jack of all trades? Are you a coder, are you a BA or are you a PM?

Maybe a few years as a permie to focus on what you want to be when you grow up, sounds like you have the aptitude for maybe Solutions or Enterprise Architect so have a look at TOGAF rather than trying to jump from one role to the next and never getting any traction.

Cheers Bud.

I don't really want to go back to coding. Where I am happiest is as a technical BA. That is to say, performing the function of a BA, and being able to talk turkey with the technical teams. I am extremely delivery focused. I would jump at the chance (now anyways) of PMing a smaller project (circa 200K - 500K sort of ballpark.

One thing I didn't ever want to do was be a jack of all trades. In my coding days I worked mainly on BPM systems, moved into business process design and then into Business analysis from there. All in the space of 16 years so progression has been slow and steady, not hopping about all over the place as has been suggested on here.

The other thing I don't want to do is run before I can walk in a PM role (hence the Prince2 training). I've worked for some nightmare PMs in the past and wouldn't want to put anyone through what I went through.

[Mich the Tester]

Cheers Bud.

I don't really want to go back to coding. Where I am happiest is as a technical BA. That is to say, performing the function of a BA, and being able to talk turkey with the technical teams. I am extremely delivery focused. I would jump at the chance (now anyways) of PMing a smaller project (circa 200K - 500K sort of ballpark.

One thing I didn't ever want to do was be a jack of all trades. In my coding days I worked mainly on BPM systems, moved into business process design and then into Business analysis from there. All in the space of 16 years so progression has been slow and steady, not hopping about all over the place as has been suggested on here.

The other thing I don't want to do is run before I can walk in a PM role (hence the Prince2 training). I've worked for some nightmare PMs in the past and wouldn't want to put anyone through what I went through.

You know what, you should be glad you can code. I've tried it several times, I've even wrestled through all the 'for Dummies' books on Java and C, I've done Smalltalk, PL/SQL and so on, and I can write very simple applications to help me testing, but whatever I try, I am tulipe at coding, and that severely restricts what I can do in IT. Now that testing is becoming just another task that everyone does, I can earn good money for the next few years giving consultancy and training, but that will be it. Be glad you can code, embrace coding and get stuck in to Agile where you'll analyse, code, test, lead teams and so on instead of moaning 'I don't really want to go back to coding', when coding is the core of the IT business and everyone that can't do it is being consigned to pissing around on the edges doing methodology consulting that lasts a few years and then dies.

Either carry on coding, or learn something completely different.

[Lockhouse]

The other thing I don't want to do is run before I can walk in a PM role (hence the Prince2 training). I've worked for some nightmare PMs in the past and wouldn't want to put anyone through what I went through.

Just by thinking that gives you a head start, you'll be fine. If I was you I'd BS my way into any PM role and let some poor sucker client take the rap for your inexperience. After all, you'll only make the same mistakes once.

p.s. That was tongue in cheek. I'm in a similar position; too senior to be fully technical, great analysis skills (I'm a data guy, similar to you), inexperienced PM. I am being benched in three weeks though...

[eek]

The other thing I don't want to do is run before I can walk in a PM role (hence the Prince2 training). I've worked for some nightmare PMs in the past and wouldn't want to put anyone through what I went through.

That's the wrong thinking if you want to be a PM. Inflict pain, make impossible demands disappear and reappear just as everyone is trying to sneak off home.

[SimonMac]

You know what, you should be glad you can code. I've tried it several times, I've even wrestled through all the 'for Dummies' books on Java and C, I've done Smalltalk, PL/SQL and so on, and I can write very simple applications to help me testing, but whatever I try, I am tulipe at coding, and that severely restricts what I can do in IT. Now that testing is becoming just another task that everyone does, I can earn good money for the next few years giving consultancy and training, but that will be it. Be glad you can code, embrace coding and get stuck in to Agile where you'll analyse, code, test, lead teams and so on instead of moaning 'I don't really want to go back to coding', when coding is the core of the IT business and everyone that can't do it is being consigned to pissing around on the edges doing methodology consulting that lasts a few years and then dies.

Either carry on coding, or learn something completely different.

I am the same, no aptitude for coding beyond putting together batch files for automating processes/