When it comes to gaining experience I've always said it's not experience unless you're doing something new. Every time I take on a new position I want it to be for in something at least a little new. Last time I changed jobs it was to learn ASP.NET MVC websites and a work with a team more appreciative of agile practices. This time it was to experience working with a large enterprise, as well as on a technology front, Silverlight, WPF, and RIA Services.
My first day on the job was today and my manager certainly didn't try and sugar coat some of the challenges I'd be up against, describing some of the difficulties he has in dealing with the 100+ strong infrastructure team. I definitely believe that it'll be a challenge, but I'm looking forward to it. Any new experience is good experience. He also outlined his plan for me. Starting tomorrow I'm moving up to work on Group #2, helping out with their main software, as well as working on a few of the smaller projects. In one or two months I'm to take over managing the group and its teams currently working on 6 projects they have going, along with whatever else comes along.
My manager was also not shy in telling me about some of the challenges I may face, Our overall department is made of the merging of a number of departments' IT teams into the super IT department: That's what Group #2 was, its own deparment of teams. Even each team and project with each former department was operating under it's own lifecycle and processes. Part of my role will be to contribute to the formalisation of a department wide ALM policy in an effort to standardise and hopefully improve the quality of all software development.
So far my single day has been pretty boring, waiting on various logons to be granted, sorting out access to various environments, and doing all the HR stuff that comes with a big company. I've also had the time to start thinking about how I'm going to approach this problem. And of course, to get excited :)
