Career

Throwing Documentum Developers into the Fire

8 Comments

A long time ago, in blog-years, I wrote a page on Building Documentum Talent. I meant it to be something upon which I could build, but I haven’t. Well today that changes, at least for a day. I’m doing two things. I’ve revised that page some (and cleaned old/non-informative comments off) and I’m going to talk about turning your everyday Documentum resource into an expert in this post.

What Doesn’t Kill You

If you read the title, you may think that torture is involved in the “next” step. You would be right. Over the years, I’ve trained many resources that I’ve identified as having potential, and desire, to become good Documentum developers. That is one of my favorite things about new projects, teaching the joys of ECM and Documentum to young consultants.

imageUnfortunately, you can only train and prepare Documentum resources so much.  You can train them and have them write Documentum applications, but they will NEVER become an expert if that is all they ever do.  They may become a senior Documentum developer, but they will not become a Documentum expert. That requires a little more work.

Every ECM project, outside of the simplest proof-of-concept, will encounter some challenges. The next time you hit one that isn’t mission critical to solve yesterday, give it to a Documentum resource. Make them solve it. Make sure that they understand the symptoms and let them at it. Be a resource for them, rarely giving answers, but telling them where to find the information.

A few things to consider first…

Continue reading →

A Career or A Job…Redux

5 Comments

My first post on this topic raised some great discussion points.  I’ve wanted to revisit the topic for a bit, but have been pressed for time.  I didn’t want to rush this post as I didn’t want to be redundant.  There are a couple of points I wanted to address.

Before I do, some definitions for this discussion.  These are not absolutes and just generalizations for the basis of discussion.  There are shades of gray that I am not going to focus upon because I want to finish sometime this year.

Continue reading →

Documentum and ECM…A Career or a Job?

7 Comments

After spending a busy day at the EMC Federal Forum, you might expect me to give some great write-up on what I saw. Well, that is coming. What I saw was only half of the picture. The most important part of this, or any event, is the networking. One topic that popped-up several times was the hiring of quality talent.

I’ve talked in the past about Building Documentum Talent. The problem is that sometimes, you don’t have the time to build people. It is a great problem to have, but it is still a problem. To solve the problem, the search goes out to find and hire quality people. Recently, I’ve been fighting a growing problem…people that only want contract work.

Continue reading →