I've written three DZone posts for the Agile Zone this week. So far I'm focusing on basic Agile practices, taken from XP, Scrum, lean, etc. I'm a very pragmatic person, and I try to focus on what works.
If you'd like to read them, you can find them here:
DZone has a comment system set up. Feel free to join and start a discussion.
Update: DZone just posted a video interview with me as well The Pitfalls of Agile Going Mainstream
The last year has had a lot of big changes for me. The year has gone by so quickly that I've not blogged about most of them, but I'm starting to blog more frequently, and I wanted to catch you up on what I'm doing and where I've been.
This site, Agile Artisans, has suffered from neglect. I'm not speaking at nearly as many conferences and have intended to convert the speaking column at the right to a Twitter feed. I post a lot of quick items on Twitter than I would've put into a blog entry in years past. I've not updated the writing pages, etc, either.
My professional status has also changed a great deal. Last year at this time I was working with NFJS One, but I resigned last fall. Shortly thereafter I was no longer speaking at the NFJS events. :( Not unexpected, but disappointing anyway. Over the last six years I've met an incredible array of attendees and speakers. It's a great experience that was a great career move for me.
Last fall, after leaving NFJS One, I took a job at a local company. The idea was to be involved with coaching and test automation, but it wasn't quite the job I expected. To be fair, I don't think it was the job they thought it would be either. The economic downturn hit them as hard as anyone, and after three months, a third of our site was laid off, and I was job hunting again.
This time I tried something different. Instead of emailing my network, I posted my job availablity on Twitter and Facebook. Facebook, as expected, was a flood of "Oh dears!" from friends and family. Not a single job lead came from Facebook despite being connected with a lot of my professional network there.
Twitter however was a bit different. I had 17 potential opportunities within an hour! One of them lead me to a company named Pillar Technology, and about a week later, I was working at Pillar! The Pillar connection came via Todd Kaufman, who heard me speak at a user's group a year or two ago. Public speaking is a great way to land that next job!
I'm also the new Agile Zone Leader at DZone. I've talked with them on occasion in the past, but I've never worked with anyone who saw the value in having me "out there" in public. Pillar sees the benefit to them, as well as to me, so I'm writing for DZone a few times a week. Most of the posts will be short articles that are about the length of most of my blog postings.
Finally, I realized over the last year that my increasing headaches weren't really normal. It was gradual, but over the last several years I'd built up to hurting 24x7. I hurt when I woke up and hurt all day long. Low-grade headaches with occasional migraines. Btw, if it's a migraine, it's not just a bad headache. You sit in a dark room and cry until the pain stops.
My lovely wife had been encouraging me to visit a headache clinic for a long time, but I'd been resisting. I finally gave up and went. And it was a very smart move. After a few weeks of experimentation we found a medication that has lifted ~most~ of my headaches. I still have relapses, but I'm so much better than I was last year at this time.
I'm in a much better place now. I'm working with a team that has done much more with Agile transformations than I had in the past. I'm learning from everyone I work with... And they don't think "work life balance" means that work outweighs life. :)
I'm sorry I haven't kept in touch lately. I'll do better.
The economy is starting to recover in spots. Are you ready for it? How well positioned are you to take advantadge of the recovery?
When things begin looking good again, will you be in survival mode, treading water until your strength gives out? Or will you have positioned yourself well enough that you maximize your return?
Here are five things you can do today to position yourself as an 'overnight success' in the next year or two.
- Join your local user group. Whether you're into Java, .Net, Ruby, or Agile, there's probably a great group in your neighborhood already. Meetup.com is a great place to start looking for one.
- Join a few national mailing lists. Both Yahoo Groups and Google Groups house thousands of mailings on topics from Agile to lean to test automation and more.
- Attend local miniconferences. Here in RTP we've just had a TED conference, an Agile Coach Camp, a few other evening events, and more. We've got Citcon (CI and test automation) coming, as well as a one day Intro to Agile mini-conference. And those are just the ones of the top of my head! What's going on in your area? Contact your MS evangilist, or tool vendor of choice and ask them when they're coming to town.
- Speak up! Be active in your local user group's mailing, or your national list. Ask a few softball questions. Ask for help. Answer someone else's questions. But don't sit on the sidelines. Lurking is fine until you learn the group, but get in the game.
- Pick your favorite tool and write a How To article. Then post it on your blog. (Don't have a blog? Then visit Blogger.com and you'll have one in five minutes!) There are lots of people who want to learn how to use tool X or technique N. Write it up and post it.
At the end of the day, and of every day, you've got to decide if you've got a job or a career. If it's "just a job", then by all means, just survive and try to make it through to the next paycheck. But if it's something you want to truly succeed at, don't hide! Get out and reposition yourself!
Blatant commercial plug You can find even more tips on tuning up your career in Career 2.0: Take Control of Your Life.
You can also check out Land the Tech Job You Love by Andy Lester and The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development by Chad Fowler.
The information is out there. Will you use it?
