GROW                TECHNICALLY within IBM

 

Are you a tech savvy person with more than 5 years of strong technical experience? If yes, then this article is just for you on how to go about shaping your technical career. In general, Technical resources hit a cross road around this timeframe where they need to make a choice between Technical profession and Management profession for career progression. There is a common misconception that there is no clear career path for technical resources.

 

IBM is a technology company at its core and has well defined Technical Professional career paths broadly classified into

IT Specialists http://w3-03.ibm.com/hr/us/your_career/en-us/caits003a.html and

IT Architects http://w3.tap.ibm.com/w3ki2/display/ITAProf/Home

 

IBM India is well aligned to this global technical professions with our very own professional leaders for our country.

 

IT Specialist

IT Specialists are the hands on professionals who develop, build, test and implement systems. IT Specialist professionals have indepth understanding of products, offering and services within their specialty.

 

IT Architect

IT Architect defines -- architects -- solutions to client business problems through the reasoned application of information technology. Those solutions are manifested as architectures and can include systems, applications and process components. They may also involve the application and integration of a broad variety of products, technologies and services, various systems and applications architectures, and diverse hardware and software components

First step is for you to figure out which professional stream to take in consultation with your manager and mentor. You can always start being IT Specialist and move on to become an IT Architect in the long term. Use IBM Career Smart tool https://w3.ibm.com/learning/lati/sites/careersmart/html/cs_planyourdevelopment.html to plan your development, gain skills and experience, track your progress.

 

Some key steps you need to do as a technical resource to grow in your career:

•        Identify your mentor in your profession and work along with him/her in identifying your skills and gaps to come up with development plan.

•        Sharpen your analysis and reasoning skills. You can start right from your current assignment to see how you could do it better given the same problem and context.

•        Come out of your "comfort zone" be it a technology or a product that you are already a master in.

•        Take on new challenges as they provide you opportunities. You need to take on stretch assignments. You could start it within your account by taking challenges in another application, collaborating with the application team to come out with solution.

•        To become a successful Technical professional you need to be an effective communicator. Work and improve on your communication skills consciously.

•        Improve your business/domain knowledge along with your technical skills. This will help you to understand the trends and come up with innovative solutions.

•        Collaborate with your technical peers across different lines of business (including SWG, ISSW etc..)

•        "Pass it on" - you need to share your knowledge to the rest of technical community. You have various means to do it like - Becoming an SME in Practitioners Support Network (PSN), contributions to developerworks (articles, discussion groups/forums), contribution to redbooks/whitepapers/IRAM, conduct trainings, actively involved in technical communities/special interest groups, patents etc... The list goes on and on...

•        Finally, mentor people working with you to bring them up in profession just like you.

 

 

About Balaji Raghavan

 

Educational qualification: M.Sc(Tech) in Information Systems, Birla Institue of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, India.

 

I am an IT Architect working with Retail Industry focusing on Multi-Channel Retail solutions. I joined IBM as a campus recruit in 1999. Along the course of my career, I have worked in various roles as a developer, senior developer, module/technical lead, application architect, lead architect. I have worked with both internal IBM clients as well as external clients across the globe. I have primarily worked with clients from Manufacturing and Retail Industry. Currently, I am the Lead Architect implementing a multichannel.com solution using Websphere Commerce Suite for a large electronics retailer in Europe.