Transitioning to the world of GIS

[ChrisScott4]

Does anyone have any experience of transitioning from a broad IT (analysis, design, project management) background to a specialist GIS role?

I anticipate the first question that will be asked is "What kind of GIS role" and that's a very valid question. My strengths and areas of interest are the application of GIS tools and techniques (problem solving) and GIS related technology. My vision at this stage would be to develop towards a GIS consultancy type position.

A bit about me... My background is predominantly in Finance (not the most orthodox start!) where I spent 10 year working in various operational, managerial and IT project based roles. My more recent step in my career saw me move from the world of banking to that of engineering, construction and nuclear power where I discovered my interest in GIS whilst taking a leading role on an ArcGIS implementation project. Since I started to understand spatial data and the power of GIS I have found myself absorbed in reams of training material, courses and hands on experience of using ArcGIS - this is typically a no-no in the world I come from where projects are delivered and then we move on to the next challenge.

The difficulty I am having is defining the path which will allow me to develop these skills and give me the exposure to spatial challenges - some questions I have in my head at the moment are: How do I make the sideways step? Do I need to retrain or take an apprenticeship? Is that do-able without making un-manageable sacrifices? How do I show the skills I have developed over the past 10 or so years are of benefit to an employer looking to recruit for a GIS type role?

For the purposes of this question let's assume that my current employer is not in a position to support my personal objectives. I will not openly name or pass comment about my current employer in this thread, so please do not ask.

What are your thoughts? I'm not the first person to try and make this transition, right?

[JamesPierce]

Additionally, I too am a Geography grad originally.

[AndrewQuee]

My background is about as far from science as you can get.

I've always had an great interest in computers, and come from a gaming background.  I built computers for friends and family and provided support for years, getting into network and server support through LAN gaming.  I was an academic failure, and dropped out of CompSci at university (various reasons) although I then later went on to achieve an associate diploma in network engineering at technical college.

After a stint as a builder's labourer, I got a basic secretarial qualification, which allowed me to obtain a clerical position with my state government for land management (property, titles, valuation, etc).  GIS was in it's infancy here, as we embarked on a program to spatialise property information state-wide and begin linking data silos together to this and each other.

Over the last 20 years I have built incrementally from that start into what I am now - applications developer, GIS/automation support, minor DBA, technical support and business workflow research/development using GIS.

For me, always being open to possibilities is the key - looking at new technologies and products, seeing how these interact with each other and how they might offer productive and technical advantages.  How these can synergise together to offset implementation costs.  By aggressively and pro-actively pursuing these things, that has helped our section maintain and increase productivity year on year in the face of endless cuts (-3%/annum for ten years).  We are one of the few sections in government that has done so, to my knowledge.  For example, my latest project is to help get rid of Oracle RDBMS, and replace it with a free system (PostgreSQL) using SDE, and replacing extensive customisations (whole workflow front end and feature edit extension) with workflow manager/versioning which would deliver substantial savings into the future.  Replacing ArcGIS with QGIS is not really an option, but we could perhaps move certain programs or products across to alternative GIS solutions, and reduce our reliance and business risk on Esri, especially with the admitted move to a subscription-based licence model.

It helps if your employer is sympathetic and allows you the time and opportunity to learn and try new things as part of your day to day work..

[PaulDavidson1]

Late to this party but I think something to contribute here is the following to consider.

You probably need to first decide which side of the soft GIS fence you want to work on.

This will help define the direction you want to push your self-directed studies.  And that direction might have a lot to do with

   GIS Analyst - do you want to mostly work with GIS geoprocessing tools, build models, do a bit of Python programming (or maybe a whole lot.)  Is your desire to build maps, work with data, process data, use ArcDesktop, ArcPro, etc...

     GIS IT - do you want to be responsible for setting up the GIS Infrastructure?  Setup AGS (servers), maybe in house Portal, design systems, do some dba work (or a lot of dba work), write specialized tools (arcobjects of python), write a lot of Python scripts for moving around & massaging data? 

I'm including the Developer concept here on the IT side.  Although I've known a number of analysts who have done quite well as coders.  It helps to know what the tools are and what you can do with the tools.  I've often seen analysts make Models and pass those off to the programmers to turn into tools

There is of course a lot of bleed over between these two tracks and everything in between. Depends a lot on the size of the organization for which you're supporting/working.  Some places you will probably wear all hats.

I believe Esri has three certification tracks these days: Desktop, Developer and Enterprise:

Esri Technical Certification Exams

Obviously you don't certification to get a job but of course it does represent a certain level of knowledge.

I point these classes out just to give you an idea of how the jobs seem to be classified, in my experience at least.

There is not right path, the beauty of GIS is that regardless of almost anything that floats your boat, you can do something in GIS that applies.  And you can cross back and forth to keep things interesting.  Bored as an IT geek, learn some mapping and geo-processing.  Ditto the other direction.