IT Hire Wire

I like to find real stories from IT professionals online. You can always take away something of value just by hearing what others are going through. Here’s some interesting profiles from this week:

A Snapshot of the Super Project Manager

Jay Rollins at TechRepublic explains how to step beyond a PMP certification to provide the most value as a PM. To elevate your role to the level of Super, you need to stretch your business thinking beyond managing schedule risks, scope creep and sign-offs.

This Super PM is not typical. Most PMs that I have seen focus on the documented requirements and point out to the business manager that he signed off on these requirements if he complains that the product is not meeting his expectations. If there’s an issue on schedule risk, he notifies the CIO so that he can try and lead the team to overcome obstacles. This type of PM becomes overhead very quickly.

 

An Awesome Enterprise Architect at IBM Tells Her Story

Deb Perelman at The IT Grind profiles awesome IT pros on a regular basis. I enjoyed this week’s profile of Martine Combes who works out of Paris, France on large scale architecture projects. Here’s some advice of hers that I took to heart:

Build a strong network: You will learn from your peers and colleagues. In your network, include managers and executives that set an example for you, they will provide you with good advise. If you stay isolated, it will be difficult for you to progress. Your network will help you to grow.

This is a particular challenge for people like me who work from home. Too much of my ’strong network’ is built on Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. It’s time to step away from the laptop and step into the office. I also find it is very easy to stay in my comfort zone with only my immediate supervisor and direct colleagues. My large scale projects naturally get me into contact with others in my organization, but consciously extending beyond that group for advisors is a strong recommendation.
 

SaaS Web Developer Talks About Life in the Cloud

I liked the profile of Nicholas Ramirez from the series In the Trenches over at Dice. He talks about being a developer within a Software as a Service company which is increasingly the business model for most major software. Ramirez begins to reveal the future of web development as programmers will increasingly need to worry more about interpreting API’s and data transfer protocols and less about particular programming languages.

Because we’re positioned on the Web, we’re able to transfer data to and from other Web sites (currently implemented via a hodgepodge of legacy and modern methods). So, there are times when I’ll need to call up developers and discuss the setup or maintenance of these systems. Some are much better versed in protocols and technologies than I am, while others much less so. It helps if you have a basic familiarization with the languages and setup of other platforms. Also, it’s good to be able to understand and troubleshoot code that was written by someone else years ago.

With data flittering all over the cloud instead of your desktop operating system, how you get and transfer information will be as important as what you do with it.

If you see some interesting IT pro stories on the web, let me know in the comments.

Tags: IT Profiles

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