What can you Expect?

I was playing around with a UNIX command line tool called Expect.  It is used for handling interactive sessions, which can occasionally come in handy for using some telnet like applications.

For myself, I'm lazy, and hate to memorize all these different configurations and such, so I created this:

#!/usr/bin/expect

set USER "hsolo"
set SRVR "falcon.server.net"
set PSWD "secret"

spawn ssh $USER@$SRVR
expect "Password: "
send "$PSWD
"
interact

Project Mgmnt Knowledge (IT Bus Skills)

For detailed specifics into the field, PMI documents their standard in a book called PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge).  You can purchase the book or become a member, which will give you a free e-book (encrypted PDF).  The version I acquired from membership is 4th edition.

In here, it states that a project is defined as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.  Project management is defined as the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. 

They have 5 knowledge areas:

• Project Integration Management,  
• Project Scope Management,  
• Project Time Management, 
• Project Cost Management, 
• Project Quality Management,  
• Project Human Resource Management,  
• Project Communications Management,  
• Project Risk Management, and 
• Project Procurement Management.

Project Mgmnt Certification (IT Bus Skills)

A great area to enhance existing skills in IT is in the area of project management. The most widely accepted industry standard regarding project management is PMI (Project Management Institute).  They offer certification in this area: CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) for passing the exam or when combined with 5 years project management experience, PMP (Project Management Professional).  Each of these requires some training from accredited courses.

The requirements for each certification is different if you can make out the graphic on the side here.  I would recommend that anyone interesting in exploring getting credentials look into how to represent or show project management experience their prior, current, and future jobs.

Project Mgmnt Training (IT Bus Skills)

One can get training at an accredited private training schools or through many university extension courses, such as CEL (College of Learning) at SFSU: http://www.cel.sfsu.edu/project/.

For a more general course, San Francisco State, under their Information Systems program, offers ISYS 663 IT Project Management: http://www.sfsu.edu/~bulletin/courses/30449.htm. The good thing about this course is that there's some additional information, such as implementation details, training in Microsoft Project, and some analytical exposure for cost analysis, such as NPV or ROI.  The downside to this course is that they require a large quantity of pre-requisites.  It is not unusual to see a group of students attending this course through Open University as guest students.

Technical IT Skills: State College

One way to get credential in our society is to get some sort of degree, such as a undergraduate degree from a CSU (CalState University).  You can gain a lot of important basic business skills in areas of accounting, finance, economics, statistics, marketing, international business, and information systems.  I think to run your own business or to step into management in IT, these essential business skills are definitely required.

But for gaining hands on skills, I have to question whether you can learn this from the state college,  at least in the exposure I have gained from Information Systems courses at SFSU (San Francisco State University).   You'll get some exposure to programming, database, and networking, but this alone will not be enough to gain employment where you'll have to implement, maintain, and manage information systems.

To gain the hard skills (technical skills), you'll have to find a way to learn this on your own.  You can learn particular systems from community colleges or extension courses, but not at state.  And in any of those programs, you still are required to do a lot of analysis and research on your own outside of any course or training program.  Thankfully, through a well rounded education, you should have the required analytical, objective, and research skills, to gain more out of any program.

Technical IT Skills: Certifications

The certifications are a great way to gain recognition of your skill set, but smart companies, also check whether you have the skills to match the certification.  After all, there are many that can memorize material for a test, but not actually understand the material involved.

I will talk later about certification specifics.  If you would like to research now, Microsoft has MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) for Windows.  For UNIX, you have SCSA (Sun Certified Systems Administrator) and SCNA (Sun Certified Network Engineer) for the Solaris operating system.  And for Linux, there are many, but the one most recognized in the industry is RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).  Another one that could potentially become popular, due to the popularity of the Ubuntu Linux, is LPI 199 or Ubuntu 199.  One can become an Ubuntu Certifed Professional if they pass Linux Professional Institute's LPI 101, LPI 102, and LPI  199 (Ubuntu 199).

• Ubuntu Certification: http://www.lpi.org/eng/certification/ubuntu_certified_professional
• Red Hat Certification: http://www.redhat.com/certification/rhce/
• Solaris SCSA: http://www.sun.com/training/certification/solaris/scsa.xml
• Solaris SCNA: http://www.sun.com/training/certification/solaris/scna.xml
• Microsoft MCSE: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcse.aspx

Technical IT Skills: Basic Hard Skills

In any scenario, a company is going to pay you for some skill you know that enables them to make a profit in some way (whether financial or not).  So you have to ask yourself, what will they pay me for?  In IT for a systems administration role, this will including setting up and maintaining services and networking.  These services would include file and print services, e-mail server, web server, database server and others.  More advance and complex services, and thus more earning potential,  would include security solutions, automation solutions, backup and disaster recovery solutions, and especially single-sign-on solutions.

At the community colleges around the Bay Area, there's tons of courses one can take.  They range from programming, scripting, operating systems (MS Windows, Linux), web servers (Apache), database servers (MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle), e-mail servers (MS Exchange), networking (CCNA), security, etc..  You can learn a lot from these courses, but ultimately real skill is acquired when you apply the knowledge, either at the work, or experimenting at home.

Here's some college int the area that offer IT oriented courses:

• Foothill College's CTIS Degrees: http://www.foothill.edu/ctis/degrees.php
• De Anza College's CIS Degrees: http://cis.deanza.edu/cis/degrees.html
• City College of SF's CNIT: http://www.ccsf.edu/Departments/Computer_Networking_and_Information_Technology/
• City College of SF's CS: http://www.ccsf.edu/Departments/Computer_Science/