August 7, 2010 Certification, Success 4 comments
Abiliton PRO Certified
Yesterday my company officially started new certification model, called Abiliton PRO. It was announced much earlier, but rewarding first portion of best company’s people happened only yesterday.
What is Abiliton?
Abiliton™ is a strategic methodology for software development lifecycle management, invented by SoftServe. Abiliton is a fully optimized approach to software development that incorporates a
superior framework of services and solutions to deliver maximum value
with each and every project. It is focused on selecting and employing the most talented and bright professionals, this way company can ensure clients that projects will be done in time and with best quality that can be provided.
Who are Abiliton PRO People?
It is clear that success of any software company depends on its employees and their growth. By rewarding the best of them company emphasizes knowledge and working capabilities of the employees in any area.
What does Abiliton PRO certificate require?
It is some set of requirements, which include your performance and knowledge. Performance is measured by regular Performance Appraisals, which include different areas to be evaluated, starting from your communication with client or within team, your result orientation, etc. finishing with applying your knowledge to daily work, like how are you in applying OOD or do you write high quality code. Knowledge, except of internal knowledge evaluations and performance appraisal, is ensured by external certificate. For example, Microsoft’s or Sun’s, or any else that are applicable to your position. This means that even Project Managers have there external certifications.
The rewarding event
President of company started his speech emphasizing why we gathered and what is the intent of rewarding. Also other guys congratulated us, after that we had some drink.
Here is me holding my certificate:
And close look at certificate itself:
Currently this certificate is requirement to get promotion. They say that they create more clear path for growing. Yes, and no. Many co-workers are complaining about that, and I understand them. Now it is required to commit extra effort in getting external certificates, but hey, guys, that is not so much difficult.
Honestly, I love to be recognized, and that is also part of my year goal and another mile stone on Developer’s RoadMap To Success. Why shouldn’t I love this? Everyone wants to be recognized and I would like to see people around who show desire to grow.
Developers Meetings Survery – RESULTS
August 6, 2010 Coaching, DevMeeting, Presentation, Success 2 comments
Few days ago I started survey about improvements to Developers Meetings inside of my team, but I also announced it to anyone who can be interested in this via twitter and blog.
Top areas of interest are:
- *Foundations like WCF, WPF, WWF and huge parts of .NET development like WinPhone
- Design Patterns either Gof, Enterprise or not commonly known
- Core .NET (concurrency, memory, security)
- New features coming in .NET
More details:
Top voted topics are:
- Enterprise Design Patterns
- WCF
- Gof Design Patterns with live code
- Estimation
- Refactoring
- TDD
My thoughts on top topics:
Because I’m not expert in Enterprise Design Pattern, it would take time for me to have some presentation on it. Either I will ask one of my colleges, who already read “Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture“.
I just scheduled Developers Meeting on WCF for my team, and I see this to be “getting started” meeting where I’m going to talk about main concepts and basic usages. I’m going to implement some funny example.
Regarding GoF Design Patters with live code, that should be very easy for me. I already have a whole bunch of different examples on my blog, so I can use them and talk on them. I expect to have junior stuff on those meetings. I would like to train my capabilities in coaching.
Estimation should be meeting where I would like to talk around Fowler’s estimation deadly sins.
Refactoring could be divided in many meetings, like core refactorings but with live code and also “refactoring to patterns”
TDD – no slides. I remember when we had presentation on TDD for devs and it was with slides. I think that is the worst way to explain TDD. Yeah, might be that it is good to show flow diagram, but I vote for code.
Details:
Improvements section:
What is the most interesting about improvements is that people would like to see more real code. Hm, this should mean that either people are tired because of my simple “hello world” examples, or either they are very interesting in how we can use those things withing complex project, and maybe they are right, because “hello world” examples could be found easily over internet.
Details on improvements:
Also as you can see we’ve got 3 comments on improvements. First one says to view presentations before meeting. I would agree with this, but maybe I will work on more detailed agendas, which will be sent exactly before meeting. Please let me know if this is ok.
I’m really looking forward to provide lot of interesting information to my co-workers and work along with them to build solid and very knowledgeable base for our growth.
Will appreciate if you would share your thoughts on this results and thank you very much for participating in survey!
Exam 70-505: TS: Windows Forms Application Development – PASSED
August 1, 2010 Career, Certification, Success No comments
I already wrote some posts on certification, where I mentioned why do I need certification and which value does it bring to me. After those posts I almost have nothing to add.
But maybe few things…
How 70-505 differs from 70-536? Questions in 505 are not so wide and after passing 536 + reading training kit it is much easier to pass this one.
How did I prepare? As I mentioned in one of my blog posts, I read training kit on 505 exam. Reading was boring. Taking into account that I already have strength experience working with WinForms it was ridiculous to read about some things like adding controls or something like that. But anyway I found some stuff interested for me. Also I did some research over internet on how other passed this exam. Not enough information exist about this one. Maybe because it is not very popular.
Also I worked on training tests, including demo test on MeasureUp.
Passing Exam
As you see preparation looks very similar to what I had for my 536 exam but I was still worrying about passing exam, since I already failed it. That time I even did not read training kit and was sure in passing exam.
As I was afraid to fail it once again, while testing I was really concentrated on questions and. I PASSED EXAM with score 1000, this means that I answered correctly on all 40 questions. It was really surprising and is pleasure for me.
You can see my transcript using this information:
https://mcp.microsoft.com/authenticate/validatemcp.aspx
Transcript ID: 904316
Access Code: andriybuday
Effect on Career
In post It is time to get Microsoft Certification, I wrote that certification is important for my career growth. Actually in few words my company has schema that defines conditions to be eligible for promoting to the next level.
Here is my current status:
As you can see, I satisfy all conditions for being Senior.
I have just perfect Performance and it was noticed by my managers, also I worked in my company near 2.5 years (looks like this condition is bonus for me, since now it should be 3+ years), also my English is now evaluated as Upper-Intermediate, I did dozen of presentations, and finally I got that certification.
So what is left? – Knowledge Evaluation.
Knowledge Evaluation is meeting when guru guys bombard me with questions to ensure that I’m competent in areas, which are already defined somewhere in requirements. So my next step is to find out my weak areas and get better with them, so I will have more balanced knowledge. I now feel that in some areas I’m competent but some are still very weak, because I do not have experience working with them. You can expect that soon you will see posts on themes I do not know well, but I try hard to figure out them for myself and for you. Hope they will be interested for you!
Please let me know your thoughts on this post.
Interview
July 25, 2010 Career, Success No comments
I’m not going to write comprehensive article on how to successfully pass Interview. I would like to share some recent thoughts on it. Might be that in one year term you will see another article with same title.
First of all, and as per me, interviewers ask mainly those things that they know well
So if you are candidate for junior position, range of questions that interviewer has could be dramatically wide for you. But once again, if you are junior, he will ask you basics in which he is guru. This means that slight inaccuracy in your definition will just highlight that you are new incomer. This shouldn’t make you sad.
If you are candidate for mediate position, you already are competent in some areas. This means that two things might happen, either your interviewer is competent in them also or either not. In first variant you will need to prove that you are really competent, and after you are done with that, probably general questions will go smoothly. In second variant it doesn’t matter how good you are in those things, everything will depend on other questions. But anyway try to highlight your strength areas.
Regarding senior positions I have almost nothing to say, because I’m still intermediate developer. I think that in this case company finds some resources that are super-competent and everything looks like in med variant, just on another level, or maybe they take candidate basing on his general applicability to this position.
For Junior
Try to show that are able to learn everything, that you are passionate about learning new technologies and can think out of the box. (One friend gave me this hint.) Generally they take juniors for their growth capabilities. That is like investment.
For intermediate
Be confident in things you know and ready for the questions you don’t know answers. Show readiness to solve problems and be honest when answering.
Interview and candidate attitude to work
Also I think that while interviewing someone company lost one very-very important thing – his/her attitude to work. That is something that could not be easily evaluated during interview. I assume that there are guys with good knowledge, but for some reason they are not interested in career growth or orientation for the results. These guys still could pass interview and then bring less value to company, then it was expected. I do not say they do little work, but this is like you’ve got good looking sport car with engine from motorbike. On one blog I read very interesting article motto of which is “Don’t hire for knowledge, hire for attitude!”
Remember that you are also interviewing
Ask about the processes they have and use. Don’t forget general questions about work conditions, like timing schedule, conditioners, vacations, and so on.
Ask deeply about the project, they are going to have you working on. For example, ask if they are doing Agile, if they write Unit Tests for their projects, which kind of duties they want you to execute and if you will have chance to do more. If it is possible ask them to see some source code. I believe that if you are good in programming you will see with whom you gonna work.
The most important for me is to know if they are looking forward to see your professional growth and if they will be glad to promote you because of that. If they really want you to grow and do not expect you to be working horse on one project, this might be good company.
Did I have one recently?
I think that you are very interesting if I have had some interview(s) in recent time. Yes, I had, but I’m not constantly looking for new job, I just accept invitations if they could bring me some value. I would say if they ask for interview, go and see where you stand in current labor market. You will see if you are losing technology tendency at your work or if you are banally losing money, because indeed you worth much more.
I’m not throwing you to send resumes and go to dozen interviews, but I recommend having one interview at least once a year, just to know if you need to pay more attention on learning something or improving something.
I am not afraid to say above, even if my current employer will read this blog post or if company who asked me for interview will read this. Why? Because if I stay, this means that current company satisfies me with conditions it gives me and this should make it happy that resources are not going away. If I move, this means that another company finds me more valuable than current, and this means only one – I was losing something at my work.
Guys, that all is about how much you cost. And I know answer for this question:
You cost exactly as much as you are getting right now!
Just think about that for a while, and you will get deep meaning of it.
Developer’s Meeting: AutoMapper
July 22, 2010 AutoMapper, DevMeeting, Presentation, Success 12 comments
Today I performed developer’s meeting on AutoMapper. I would say that it went good, but I did not really enjoy it and will explain why. But I do not regret doing this presentation and will explain why.
Why am I upset of today’s presentation delivery?
Not so many people got interested in theme, that I’ve decided to present. There were about 10 or less developers in conference room. I really expected to have bigger audience and had prepared to speak to other division of our software business unit. But I believe there are some reasons why I did not get many listeners.
Few important thoughts for presenters that encounter the same
Never be disappointed by the number of attendees.. at least at the beginning, so this will not decrease quiality of your speach.
If topic of you speech is not really popular it doesn’t mean that you should discount its value.
If topic is indeed simple don’t neglect your preparations. For some reason I even wasn’t a bit nervous before presentation, as I’m usually are and I don’t find this to be good.
Take a look around, you probably will see those who are interested in topic and those who are simply excited by your presentations. Special thank to today’s attendees, without you I would have to talk to walls.
For future pay more attention on actuality and popularity of the topic. I personally going to create monkeysurvey to get that information.
With smaller audience you get more feedbacks. Why? Easily, they feel more relaxed and you have more time to allocate to each of them. In today’s presenation I got so many interesting questions and figured them out for myself and for audience online, while writing code. That was amazing.
Try to understand those who did not participate. Probably they counted to be more reasonable to spend that hour on some urgent issues or they discounted topic, since they are sure that will not need AutoMapper. And if they even will need it, it is quite possible to learn it in amount of couple of hours.
Still be proud of yourself. This is must be, otherwise you will lose confidence which costs a lot.
Presentation
For my presentation I’ve used already existing posts on AutoMapper, also for the end of presentation I had real world usage examples.
And here is presentation itself:
View more presentations from Andriy Buday.
Don’t forget to check out my article on AutoMapper here.
My 100-th blog post: Blogging Pays Off
July 3, 2010 Success No comments
Hello my Dear Readers, this post is my 100-th blog post.
Almost 9 months past since I’ve posted my first words here. I went through different topics here. Starting with design patterns and different educational stuff (my master year), and finishing with different book reviews and tips on how to become successful.
But why do I need blog?
First of all I love blogging. It helps me feel that I’m needed in this world and that I bring something valuable to others. Also it takes me closer to my life goals. One of those is to become successful world known developer. And even if I’ll switch to some managing position in the future I will still be developer of my and people’s around lives.
Blogging keeps me concentrated on different topics I write about, helping me understand them better. I would bet that most of the software developers think that they know Gof design patterns, but when you ask them about main concepts they could list only obvious. Ask them to perform research over internet and create own example and bright understanding will come to their mind. Same things happen to me. It is just amazing how something could be clear after you wrote a blog post about it.
Sometimes I’ve been posting short quick tips. They could look useless, but when I come to the same problem I just go to my blog and see the solution. It happened to me few times, and I was really proud that I have this blog.
Blogging helps me stand out. My colleagues see that I do the best to keep in touch with new technologies and that I’m trying to self-improve. Sometimes it makes me sad when I see others being much more proactive and productive, as Scott Hanselman (blogging god?). I’m afraid that I could make someone upset because of my mood. On the other hand when I see those active people it drives me to become super active. I hope I help my coworkers in their passion to became famous.
Blogging increases my visibility. I’ve been asked few times for meetings outside of my company. Once it was about creating user group, finally it was created without me, but now I’m with those guys, doing some presentations for the best .NET UG in Ukraine ;). Few other times it were job opportunities but I did not leave my company, hope it was the right decision.
Finally, blogging pays off! Week ago I had performance appraisal and besides of my usual capabilities like result orientation and knowledge, my blog played evident role in how that meeting went. Now I have possibility to be Senior Developer in my company with higher salary, I hope :). But remember that it is not just your blog (aka. public visibility) to lead you to success. It is your hard work and attitude to things you do!
Be directed to your goal and move forward!
[2013-11-21 EDIT: some language corrections]
Book Review: The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
July 2, 2010 Book Reviews, Success No comments
Last weekend I had a chance to read very interesting book, kind of business novel. I was given this book by my managers after we finished with my performance appraisal. Which (btw) went very well.
Book talks about guy, who manages plant where he encounter problem of going behind the schedule and his bosses wanted to close out his plant. But he with colleges, using Theory of Constraints and sophisticated thinking, was able to get plant to the new level.
From first pages I was not sure if book is kind of my thing, since I usually don’t read novels, but it turns out that book is only a bit hard going at the beginning. From page to page it was more gripping to read and in the end it just became a real page-turner.
Book forces us to think that everything is possible, you just need to take a look for wider solutions without using any of your stereotypes. Book never gives you ready answers, so it is thought-provoking one. First it states the problem, describing it in details, after that main hero is bombarded with different questions by friends, which provoke us think in pair with him.
Reading book was really-really enjoyable and I would highly recommend it for your reading. Book indeed is exciting for those who are interested in career development and in manager’s positions.
P.S. I’ve changed this post a bit to use more specific words like: interesting, exciting, thought-provoking, a real page-turner, gripping, kind of my thing, hard going at the beginning, gripping. That was English course activity to have review on some book. I’m lazy to write new one.
Law Of Success: book review
May 14, 2010 Book Reviews, Success No comments
Today I finished listening to another book on success. It is called “The Law Of Success” by Napoleon Hill. Book is represented in 16 lessons.
I think that it worth to read or listen to this book. It shows up lot of different tips that you can use to achieve your strongly defined and be biggest goal of your life. I know that most of books on success talk about main goal of your life, but this one I think is the strongest on this requirement.
So it says that you need to define for yourself goal of your life, and… what is more interested… you should keep repeating its formulation every day few times. Hill just refers to autosuggestion as one of the key concepts on getting your results.
Honestly yesterday I tried to repeat for myself that I will wake up 2 hours early than I usually do, and it did not help… sad. Today I will have another try. So “I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8 regardless of Saturday! I will wake up at 8am! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8 and will be able to do what I have planned! I will wake up at 8! Guys, I will wake up at 8! I will wake at 8am! I will really wake up at 8am! I’m going to wake up at 8 o’clock tomorrow! I will wake up at 8 am! I will do that! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8!”
Ok, I did what he asked, now I will see if it will really help me, and will share with you :)
Book review: How to Win Friends and Influence People
May 1, 2010 Book Reviews, Success 2 comments
I just listened to one very interesting audio book. Book title is “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. And I think that it worth to read, or listen to it as I did, because it teaches you how to interact with others. If you are going to grow in your career you indeed need such stuff to know.
This book is of psychological type and author (Dale Carnegie) is talking about interaction with other people. Mainly it talks about how to correctly behave when you want someone to be on your side.
Book could be very useful for managers and for people in their lives. For developer it could be useful in future when you are going to drive few people in your team. If you just starting as a senior developer you already should have some experience driving junior stuff. When you are Technical Leader you need to drive whole team, you need to establish correct processes in your team and one of the hardest tasks in all of this is to make others work on tasks you assign them in the way that they will want to work on that.
Sometimes there are situations when you see somebody’s mistakes and there should be a way to show them this, but at the same time not make them your enemies – they should look at you as at friend, who wants to help.
Book has a lot of different examples from real life when you convince others to do what you want, but for them it looks like they really want to do it, because it seems useful for them.
There are a lot of rules in book. You could go and see contents of the book.
Go to this wiki page to see main points of book. (I recommend).
But now I will try to list down what I remember:
- Honor others for the smallest they did.
- Show that they are valuable – all people indeed what to be valuable.
- Start conversation with what people want and make them answering with “YES” on your questions, only then you could give bad news.
- Smile to others but don’t bluff.
- Build reputation for mentees in eyes of others. So your mentee will do everything he could in order to prove what you said about him.
- Really think about how to walk in his/her shoes.
I know that you heard about that a hundred times. But when you will spent 10,5 hours on listening to this book and when author talks about this during all the time. This will ensure that you remember it and probably will force you to try it in real life. You could start with your team members or with you wife. I think that I will try with my girl just today… or even before I will meet her, since I’m now disconnected from internet and typing this in bus road to Lviv. So will be able post this in evening.
I would recommend this book if you have time for such things or if you could get audio version as I did.
P.S. I tried today some tips from book – it works! You should try.
Exam 70-536: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Development Foundation – PASSED
April 30, 2010 Certification, Success No comments
Why would I need to pass that exam at all?
There are many arguments to pass the exam. Most of them are simple bureaucracy. First of all, your resume will have additional strength if you will add few certification records on the bottom. Secondly, many companies are interested to have their employees to be certified, or maybe they want to make you promotion road more hard :) so to allow you to be promoted you need to pass some set of certificates and cope with lot of other requirements. At least this is situation which I have in my company.
Why would I need this exam for my blog?
Very easy: when YOU are on my blog first time, you read something and create your thought on topic you just read and then you decide to subscribe or not to subscribe. Question is following: what is guarantor that it worth to subscribe to my blog? And answer is “Nothing”. But what will be your reaction if you will see MVP logo at the top-right of my blog? Are my chances better? Or course they are.
Why else would I need this exam?
Following point is very important but honestly I could not put it above (I will describe why). The point is to enhance you knowledge and learn something new. Of course during preparation to exam you read some books and search over MSDN on topics you are interested and which will be measured. But in real life you could be experienced .NET developer and still have difficulties to pass exam. In other words I have doubts if 10 years experienced developer could pass exam without at least some special preparation to it.
What else did I miss?
Of course – self-confidence. In order to be successful you need to feel yourself confident in things you do. In order to grow you should have something behind you, that could you help stand when you are with people who have certificates. And plus to that it is always very enjoyable to know that you know more then others. But a secret: do not show them that. It is very important. Do not praise yourself, let others do it instead.
How to prepare and how did I prepare?
You could find a lot of very interesting posts over internet on how to prepare.
I like this one:
http://lukecummins.me.uk/2009/08/70-536-my-tips-for-this-microsoft-exam/
I even found other blogs that are about certification.
My recommendation number 1: google on how to prepare… and you will find a lot of interesting stuff.
Also while you are trying some demo tests on MeasureUp or tests from TrainingKit and if you are not confident about answer do not try to remember it – go and figure answer in depth!
Also I wrote some tips on how to read TrainingKit. At least this works for me:
- Read accurately but quick if theme is familiar to you.Skip “Real
Word” and pay attention on “Important” and “Exam Tip”, try to remember
it! - If there are boring explanation and then code, switch first to code
and analyze if you understand everything there, and if that is true,
don’t return back to text. - Do not execute Labs unless you do not understand what you had read.
- If there are difficult chapters try to read them twice – I did this
with Application Security.
How was it?
Night before exam I felt confident about exam, but was still worrying.. so I was preparing till 3am. In the morning I came to work as usual and did few things… reviewed ones code, checked e-mails… expressed my thoughts on demo we should have today and wrote e-mail to team members that I will be out for about 2 hours. My company is Microsoft’s parner so I do not need to move to other location – just get down 5 floors.
First couple of questions I was nervous, but then I felt that I’m confident with most of questions. I marked only 2 out of 40 for additional review. When I finished I got message saying that I PASSED EXAM with score 907. This means that I answered incorrectly for about 4 questions. I think that this is very good result.
Picture which I get is like following:
My next target is probably 70-505. Passing it is point of honour, because I already failed it twice because of overflow of confidence.
Also as I’m active in preparing developers meeting for developers from my project and I’m thinking to teach our developers in order to get certification – covering some areas from exam.
Express your thoughts on passing this exam.
