[mindcrime]

There are multiple ways, but some quick thoughts:

0. Buy and read books, read blogs, watch youtube videos, whatever, and gain as much knowledge as you can, on whatever field you decide to pursue (Lean, Six Sigma, Agile, CMMI, whatever.)

1. Take a class (or classes) on your new endeavour. Any kind of introduction to the topic that's something you can document and put on your resume is a start.

2. Get some sort of certification in that field, if you can afford it. Yeah, I know certifications are of dubious value, but it's better than nothing (usually) and some firms actually place a lot of stock in that sort of thing. Just don't think of certifications as a "magic bullet" but rather as just another arrow in your quiver.

3. Now may have a to cheat a little bit. What I mean is... if your current job doesn't involve using, say, Six Sigma, start by learning as much as you can. See above. Then start talking about it at work, have a hallway conversation with your boss if nothing else. Try to legitimately wrangle a way to redefine your current job to include some element of that ("Boss, can we apply Six Sigma techniques to managing $SOMETHING?"). Ideally he/she says yes, and now you can legitimately list experience with that topic... but if not, just keep talking about it, write some reports on it and send them to people, and then - when talking about your old job - mention how you "spearheaded an initiative to implement Six Sigma, blah, blah, blah..."

And from here, you just working to fight your way into a new job doing your chosen $WHATEVER, by hook or by crook.

One other little note about the above... your current boss might not be to eager to let you totally redefine your current job, but - assuming your doing a good job already and aren't considered a slacker / loser - you can usually get away with asking to do something extra. Take advantage of that to squirm your way into whatever new thing it is you want to do. You may have to jump ship to a new job to complete the switcheroo, but the initial goal is just to get a beachhead.

[Swannie]

I think the fastest route into project management can be had through the business analyst role. Basically if you're already on top of the requirements, work with the customers well, manage your own work well, report risky/unclear areas quickly and can manage the technical people to clear them up fast... you're practically project managing already.

I've rarely ran into good business analysts. They are often failed developers, because they lack the right mindset. But if you are smart and think technical, just don't enjoy the programming, you'll quickly become one of the best BA's around... and then you'll get promoted! And all will lament the loss :P

[confuzed]

If you don't mind... Could you elaborate a bit what do you mean by saying "[...]they lack the right mindset" ? What is the "right mindset" for developer?

[Swannie]

I think you have to think logically and be able to make cognitive jumps.

For example realising that process A must be rolled back if midway though - therefore it is essentially an atomic transaction with all that entails. Or that the user opening a bunch of spreadsheets for a specific piece of data to fill in another form, is really just a key-value pair lookup on a relatively static dataset.

Bad business analysts I've encountered fail to understand the core process they are designing around, or take the user's explanation as gospel, even when there are gaping holes in the logic. They often define processes which to a developer are a simple problem that has been solved in many situations, in a completely odd way, where they have failed to make a conceptual leap from the problem they are solving, to one solved in other parts of the same system.

[confuzed]

This recipe should be called "3 easy steps to become Six Sigma consultant". You could even write an ebook and sell it on the internet :)

On a serious note - I think the pattern is clear and it could be replicated successfully on different areas of life. Thank you for taking your time to present it here.