Technology As Innovator

Ken, a friend of mine at Illinois State University, has started his project on Healthy Living.

Being his close friend for 9 years, I know he has a burning enthusiasm for researching, practicing and advising effectiveness in life.

Living in the heart of the prosperous China Town of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for 18 years then moving to the US, Ken has acquired both Oriental (mostly ancient Chinese and a bit of Korean) and Western philosophy of healthy living.

This blog of mine has always been about business and everything about healthy working development & conditions. Until recently, I started being more serious on work-personal life balance and that was one reason why I strongly support Ken’s project.

More coming on his site: Healthy Living

So great! We have the chance to meet, work with and learn from a lot of interesting and talented people.

The job of a Business/System Analyst is so fascinating and challenging. I am not, at all, surprised to see the growing interest in this position.

Apart from motivationally writing for the web, I have been invited to universities as a motivational speaker to talk about the IT industry and IT occupations with IT students.

What question do you think is most frequently asked?

What programming languages and tools are currently used in your company?

It is not a surprising one because the same question has been asked much more frequently on technical forums and newsgroup and has caused so much debates on T-tool vs. U-tool and more heatedly, X-language vs. Y-language.

And my answer is

“It is nice that you are preparing the knowledge and skills that you think your potential employers will seek. However, skills and experience in a particular programming language is not the only technical skill employers seek in candidates. They’re also looking into the foundation technical knowledge, such as but not limited to: Object Orientation, Design skills, Software Methodologies, Data Structures and Algorithms, Database Design, Architecture, Computing Theory, that empower your programming skills. You may do programming with, let’s say, Java relatively well in some situations without the above knowledge, but if you are thrown into a more complex project to build a huge product, the risk is high.

One example. You spend two to four years in college polishing your skills in X language that you predict will (still) be hot in a few years when you graduate. When you do graduate and apply for jobs, if they say “Sorry, X is old. We’re needing Y people”, what will you do? Spend the same amount of time learning Y? No, it’s not the way it should work. Foundation knowledge is the root, languages and tools are leaves. Equip yourself with the foundation, and when technology changes (is IT a slow changing area that does not change every 6 month or so?), you can adapt more easily.

When you have mastered the foundation knowledge, and possessed significant experience in using programming languages, which IDE is not a bug big issue.

Besides, about recruitment, technical skills are not the only evaluation criterion. Think about soft skills and attitude too.”

I was thinking about my profession

The number of Business Analysts and System Analysts required in software companies is not that many compared to developers; in some smaller companies with less formal process definition, some developers take the Analyst role. If the need for Analysts were higher, this question could have been asked: “What modeling languages and tools are currently used in your company?”

The answer is simple: Unified Modeling Language. UML itself has been a well-established language for modeling. More of a reason why it has become so popular is due to the promotion of UML by RUP.

But once again, UML is a language. The case is not much different from that of programming languages. Knowing UML is not enough to perform all tasks Analysts do, Business Process Modeling for instance - and a new standardized set of notations named BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) is being proposed.

Underlying UML skills are Modeling skills. Modeling languages are used to present information in a more visual (and structural?) way. You need to know what model or diagram should be used to present what kind of information at what time in what situation to whom.

Model is one kind of information. In order to develop solid Modeling skills, Information Processing skills and Data Analysis skills need to be developed first or in parallel.

With all those skills at hand, you will be able to guess how shapes are categorized and may quickly locate the right notations you need in Modeling tools, no matter if it’s Rational Rose or Visio or Enterprise Architect or so on.

After you have created a good piece of model, you may want to present it to customers or other teams in your project. Presentation skills may help.

Side discussion: Model vs. Diagram

Throughout this article, I have used Models consistently, without mentioning diagrams. The may raise question since “UML diagram” is a very common terminology. The reason is because Analysts produce visualizations which are not diagrams too. Organization charts, map, prototype are just a few to name. ‘Model’ covers all of these, of course including diagrams. Also, one trivia is that the word may remind the fact that information systems actually model the real world.

Conclusion

So to conclude, foundation knowledge is required in any profession. Technology and tools change so quickly, but concepts do not as quickly. Build your internal strength should be the higher priority.