Latest Posts - Page 120 of 194

April 10, 2019April 16, 2019 Lessons Learned From Consulting

Increasing Productivity and Quality With Proper Tools

One of the side effects of becoming a better developer is increasing productivity and quality. You literally get more value from time spent on a task. These improvements can come through skills or through using tools. That is the focus of this episode. Part of becoming a better developer is adding to the list of tools available for a task. One Trick Ponies Unfortunately, there are developers that master a tool or two and never advance from them. While they are very productive with what they know, there are advances in tools that will pass them by. An extreme example is the development languages themselves. Think about how hard it would be to create a modern application in machine language. Even... Read more

April 8, 2019April 8, 2019 Lessons Learned From Consulting

Enhancing Your Resume With Development Tools

A big part of advancing your career includes enhancing your resume. There will be new skills you pick up along the way, and it helps to let others know about them. This consists of the tools you use in your daily work. Even those that you use occasionally can be the first step into a new job. Enhancing Your Resume, Not Spamming Key Words First and foremost, this topic is not about spamming your resume with tool names. Instead, this should be an exercise of putting things on your resume that make you who you are. Where languages and platforms are the most valuable aspects of your professional profile, tools are also useful in enhancing your resume. These items tend... Read more

April 5, 2019April 8, 2019 Lessons Learned From Consulting

Researching New Tools and Technologies

Learning for our personal purposes is not the limit of what IT workers are asked to do. There are also situations where we need to learn the latest tools or technology advances. Unfortunately, these are not often tasks assigned to junior staff. However, researching new tools is an excellent way to add to our resume and general skill set. Therefore, we should take on these assignments when they become available. Researching New Tools For A Project An assignment to research technology or tools will include a deliverable. Thus, we need to develop a process and approach for accomplishing our goals and reporting the results. Fortunately, we have been doing this for years. Nearly every skill we learn includes a proof of mastery. That may... Read more

April 3, 2019April 8, 2019 Lessons Learned From Consulting

Career Advancement Through Training and Conferences

There are many ways to add to our skills and advance our career. While on-the-job learning is essential, formal learning situations can move the ball forward at a faster pace. Training and conferences fit this bill perfectly. However, the cost of one of these options can be more than our employer (or we) are willing to take on. Plan For Training and Conferences Budgeting is critical. This is true no matter if you are paying the bill or you are asking your boss for the company to cover it. There is often a suitable return on investment for taking part in a conference or training. Thus, the challenge is freeing up the funds for it. First, building these educational opportunities into... Read more

April 2, 2019April 8, 2019 Become a Better Developer

Embracing and Making the Most of the Agile Process

There is a lot that has been written about the Agile process. Thus, it has been a hot topic that all the cool kids are discussing for several years. While there is nothing wrong about that, there are still a lot of aspects of Agile to embrace outside of the buzz. This is a software development process that can improve productivity, quality, and reduce risk. It is not a silver bullet. Nevertheless, we can find many ways for it to help us build better solutions. Improve Velocity With the Agile Process The critical part of the Agile Manifesto is not a reduction of paperwork. It is a reduction in things that matter less. We have often mentioned the Pareto principle... Read more

April 1, 2019March 23, 2019 Lessons Learned From Consulting

Learning New Tech Skills On The Job

An IT career demands that we include learning new tech skills as part of our regular routine. This requirement often leads to a lot of time spent on career development. However, there are ways to make progress on this goal in our daily work. Thus, allowing us to kill two birds with one stone as the saying goes. Learning New Tech Skills – Startups The best situation for drinking from the firehose is a startup. You will have more to do than you can handle and that equates to learning. Yes, it is not the easiest way to advance your career. On the other hand, it may be the fastest way to get ahead. There is a reason so many Internet... Read more