For those who might want to make the leap from Developer to Architect

The last two weeks, actual work has conspired to keep me away from the blog. How rude. I miss "the beach" already.

It seems only fair to summarise the lessons I have learnt whilst masquerading as an architect on a short consulting stint with Marc McNeill. Simon Brown at Coding the Architecture is much better at talking about this stuff than I am, but I need to update the blog with something!

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Live at Last

We went live with 'real' customers this week just gone. It's the culmination of nearly two years work for me personally, and three years for our company.

It's really nice to be live at last, and to have our name out there. It might (in fact, should) change the focus of our work. Without paying customers it's much more difficult to prioritise work based on what they might need or want.

Exciting times for LMAX!

Tales from the Other Side: Confessions of an Offshore Resource

After the acquisition of a company with offices in New York, I pestered my company outrageously until they got fed up and finally relented – they agreed to send me to the US.

To ease the transition, I chose to move onto a project which would allow me to start working in London and continue on the same team after I had moved to New York.

In the extreme over-excitement that followed my relocation, it took me a little while to realise that effectively I was an offshore resource, no different really from any of our Indian test team, and the team needed to manage this appropriately.

I learnt a number of lessons whilst playing this game. Some of these points are also valid for teams with remote resources (e.g. people working from home).

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Certification

I know there are arguments against certification, and I definitely think that using certifiction to determine whether to interview or recruit people is downright daft, because frankly learning a bunch of answers isn't all that difficult. But I personally find that completing a certification really helps to round out my knowledge in an area. I guess my thoughts are that a fairly recent certification combined with the work experience to back it up is something that would make your CV more interesting to recruiters.

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Certified Scrum Master

Hmm. I have been so busy trying to think of "good" things to write here, and not having the time to actually write, that I see it's been 6 months since the last post.

If anyone is still out there though, I need help. I need a good Certified Scrum Master course in New York or London, preferably in April or May. Any suggestions? The one I wanted to go on was vetoed and now I find it's not running in NY again until Autumn.

PS Do you think it would be inappropriate to use the term "Scrum Mistress" on my CV?