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Professional Development Strategies: Page 6 of 9

One thing we IT pros, consultants and magazine editors have observed over the years is the significant number of outages attributable to a lack of hands-on experience. There's the adage, "We only truly learn by destroying." But isn't it better to destroy in simulation than in production? Again, when you think about other disciplines, it makes sense to track the number of hours with given types of technology. You must log in excess of 35 training hours in an airplane to obtain a private pilot's license; why should complex technology be different, particularly at enterprises?

Consider redos of upgrades. Upgrades are typically done in overtime. Unexpected snags arising from inexperience can be costly, particularly when the project involves an outside vendor's billable time.

Don't be fooled into thinking your staffers get what they need to avoid these errors at the weeklong training class. We've participated in and written these classes and labs--they're usually optimized for quick-hit achievement of a single goal to emphasize the lecture. They aren't a substitute for doing a dry run of a complex deployment. A lab that mocks up the salient parts of your environment is essential.

Projects frequently get stalled because of a lack of staff time-management skills: the ability to schedule blocks of time to devote to a task; the ability to use your calendar as a planning and reminder tool; and the ability to use some kind of follow-up mechanism, whether with vendors or fellow staffers.

Pursuing professional development is itself contingent on having the discipline to "steal" small amounts of time on a regular basis for this purpose. Think about it: Half an hour of professional development reading per day means about 130 hours of professional development annually in a typical job. Over 10 years, that's 1,300 hours--not too shabby.