For the past two years, I've had the pleasure of being involved in the world of consulting. Being a consultant has allowed me to learn about how businesses utilize technology to make their processes more streamlined and automated. In particular, I've been able to develop my "business analyst" skills by being more involved in the overall process rather than just the coding piece.
During the past year, I was heavily involved in the design and implementation of an enterprise-wide solution for one our clients.
(NOTE: I've stressed the words enterprise-wide solution because these words tend to have different meanings to different people/businesses)
And for the past couple of months, I've been involved more in the design and implementation of systems that use the artifacts from the enterprise-wide solution. For me, this was a great experience because I got to play two roles: producer and consumer. I got the produce the code/framework/processes and then consume them within a business application. Not many times do you have the chance to be an inch-deep, and a mile-wide and a mile-deep and an inch-wide.
Anyway, I'm starting to ramble...What I'm trying to say is that starting next week, I will be starting a new position as an architect for a crop insurance company located in West Des Moines. As an architect, I'll get to work with both business and developers on really neat projects that will challenge everyone involved.
It's truly going to be a really fun time the next couple of months. Will I miss consulting? Most definitely! However, by taking this architect role, I still get to be a connection between business and technology...so in essence, I get to be an internal consultant. ;-)