Do it, ‘Google’ or enter into ‘Chat GPT’, ‘professional development’. What do you see? Let me guess, you see courses, suggestions, ideas, encouragement, network, develop etc.
These are all fancy words are they not? Let me tell you. Weren’t we taught these fancy words in school? Why do I enter ‘professional development’ and feel these words are empty.
Think about it. Close your eyes for 15-20 seconds, clear your mind and focus on your breathing for these seconds. After 15-20 seconds open your eyes. Now ask yourself. Your working, student self. Do these words actually mean anything to you? Do they make you feel you are going to ‘professionally develop’? Develop your job, career, skills set? Sure they, are positive words, but it’s fair to say these words are not going to create ‘professional development’, let alone create ‘IT professional development’.
In the line of work in IT. I’ll tell you right now the knowledge, practical and people skills required for ‘IT professional development’.
1. Communication:
You know how to talk right? Otherwise, how would have finished school, college and get into the workforce. Do you know how to talk IT, the lingo?
Let me paint you a very common scenario of a customer and an IT technician.
Phone Technician – “Hi how may I help you today”
Make believe customer – “It’s not working”
Phone Technician – “What’s not working”
Make believe customer – “My phone screen”
Phone Technician – “What’s wrong with it”
Make believe customer – “It’s not working”
Phone Technician – (contemplates life -_-)
Phone Technician – “Does the screen not light up, you can’t tap something on the screen? What specifically is not working”
Make believe customer – “When I swipe up, I can’t get to the main screen”
Phone Technician – (now understands, the customer is trying to unlock the phone and the customer is trying to get to the main menu)
So many times, customers, IT users / consumers, more times than not, never can describe an IT issue. This adds unnecessary time and work trying to sort an issue. Now imagine a new
IT support desk user escalating an issue and trying to describe a technical issue to a superior or level 2 support desk, using the line ‘it doesn’t work’.
It’s really a pathetic way to describe an issue. Unfortunately, it’s not the fault of the new IT support desk user, but really the failure of our ‘professional development’ and to a certain degree, the IT education system.
Let me paint you a more proactive and meaningful scenario between the phone technician and make-believe customer.
Phone Technician – “Hi how may I help you today”
Make believe customer – “My phone’s screen, which is an ABC model (make believe phone model), has an issue unlocking the lock screen when I try to enter my main home panel which has my main apps. I have tried turning the phone off and turn it back on. I also have tried tapping the phone and leaving my finger on the screen for 5 seconds to access the secondary menu. But these two troubleshooting methods haven’t worked for me. Further to add I read some things online and other customers may also be having the same issue. Is this something you’re aware of or know about?”
Phone Technician – “Ah yep this locking issue on the ABC model. I know that issue, let me help you out there. What I’ll need you to do is provide me your phone for a day, so, I can upload a software update to fix this locking issue.”
Look at the difference between the two scenarios. There is less back and forth. I see these poor interactions everyday between IT professionals.
When I say to develop communication, one needs to develop the language, lingo, terms, descriptions etc.
Sure, you’ve been asked to describe the issue, but have you been taught to actually describe the issue to the smallest detail? Probably not.
2. Documentation:
‘Oh yeah don’t worry I’ll get that report to you (the boss) at 4pm……. (An hour later it’s 5pm) ……. Employee contemplating life -_-‘
The most underutilised skill in the IT industry. If you haven’t heard already let me, give you some common phrases you’ll hear in your time in the IT workforce.
“Yeah, the document is old, and no one has updated in years”, “Nah there’s no documentation on this, someone wrote the app years ago and nothing was written on how to support it”, “The person who wrote the app did document some of it, but it never made any sense to us. It was written poorly”, “Oh yeah we had a wiki page on this, but we lost it”…. blah blah blah.
You get my drift. Document, document, document. It’s the one skill that will make your work easier. Don’t document for others, but document for yourself. Build your documentation and once you’ve built this skill and crafted it as your own you can then share this among your team members.
Documentation becomes a weapon against IT professionals who are lazy and protects yourself from managers. By demonstrating your proactive skill in documentation your work becomes easier.
Later, on “what happens when you enter ‘professional development’ or how about ‘it professional development’ what do you find? (Pt. 2)” I will be providing more specific examples on communication and documentation.
Summary:
Communication. Learn the lingo, terms, language to develop the skills on how to describe / explain the issue.
Documentation. Build notes, procedures (e.g. step by step sentences on how to perform workarounds, or how to log into a system etc), processes (e.g. I need to talk Person A to upload this marketing image file into the S3 bucket (‘note to self’ – get Person A to show you how they upload the marketing image into S3) etc).
Developing these two skills over the course of your IT profession will make your work easier, trust me.
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