What should you prepare for?
Hold on to your hats, we're going downhill! Be prepared that you will have to invest a lot of time and energy in the beginning and learn how things work in the IT field. It is a long-term investment that will definitely pay off! If you look around in the industry, it will go smoothly. Of course, it won't work without courage and determination! You need to set a clear goal and motivation that will sustain you in the individual tasks in the long term.
Ask questions! If you do not create a good foundation, there will be nothing to build on.
You learn the most through practice, and whatever you try once, write down notes, fix and store in your long-term memory, it simply stays there. Then the next time you encounter that step, you'll already know. It's an adventure and something it will surprises you every day.
If you want to orient yourself in a new field, get to know your IT colleagues and don't be afraid to ask them about their personal experiences and how things work in their company. You'll get to know the environment better and find out if it's the field you'll enjoy. Many field-focused groups also operate online. I have my own experience with the Czech community from Czechitas and Junior Guru.
ServiceNow itself has a huge community of experts on various levels and someone is always there to lend a helping hand.
Also, don't be shy to ask your friends. There will surely be someone from the field among them who will be happy to share their experience with you. I was lucky enough to have such IT gurus around me in my co-work. They supported me and were willing to simply explain complex processes or help me with tasks.
Because something is always changing and developing in the IT world, you need to be rich in the natural need to develop and learn new things and look for connections until everything fits together nicely. One of the key features is inherently patience! And as we know, patience brings roses 😉 Only after hours of searching for a bug in a malfunctioning system you can excitedly exclaim "EUREKA", it's time to be able to properly praise yourself for your keen eye.
Prerequisites for IT developers
Language
Knowing English is an absolute must. Most of the technical material and concepts are mainly in English and writing and reading will be your daily bread.
The IT world
In the beginning, you will create a general overview of IT concepts and processes in order to gain insight into the field. This czech course from Czechitas which is also free, helped me the most, but i'm sure you can find something similar on YouTube.
Project management
At least basic knowledge of project management and above all agile development, which is used in most IT companies, is required.
I recommend the Google Coursera course - Project Management
Studying is possible in your free time and at your own pace. Everything is nicely and clearly explained and you apply the learned theory in practical tasks that make up more than 60% of the course. Something simpler also will be enough for you. You can find many videos on YouTube and you can also check out these pages https://www.scrum.org/.
Project management tools
Jira or Asana is most often used (it is used in the Coursera course). There are many other tools on the market and sometimes companies use their internal programs. The basics tend to be roughly the same and you'll get the hang of it quickly. Atlasian has a large number of tutorials for working with Jira.
Programming / Coding / Databases
Python or Javascript basics - BackEnd
HTML basics / CSS basics - FrontEnd
SQL for working with the database
It is good to know the basics of front-end development, where the HTML coding language is used to indicate the structure of the page. Then CSS is used for styling and JavaScript scripting language is used to move the page to make it interactive.
For the backend or working with databases, Python or the already mentioned JavaScript are the most suitable for beginners. Udemy has a great Python course - 100 Days of Code.
One of the best resources for self-study is this this web, where you can find courses for all of the above. Many free introductory courses are also offered by the already mentioned Czechitas.
Mimo App
As part of this application, I tried 10-15 minute exercises every day on my way to work. Everything is nicely and simply processed.
Programming tools
These are the most common developer tools we've covered in the academy through tutorials:
GIT + Github
Visual Studio Code
Digital Academy: Testing
Studying at Czechitas taught me the following:
• Understand the importance of testing and its necessity in software development.
• Be able to talk about software quality, the role of the tester and testing as a framework activity
inside a development team.
• Use the basic principles and techniques of testing in the context of agile software development.
• Analyze and interpret user requirements and clearly report defects
using tools that are needed across the software development cycle.
• Be able to test the web application with regard to the importance of individual
functionality and various testing techniques.
• Be able to evaluate the results of testing and properly document them.
• Work with basic operations on SQL databases.
• Be able to test the API layer of the web application.
• Be able to analyze the HTML / DOM structure of the website for automation purposes in testing.
• Recognize the advantages / disadvantages of automation and cases in which to use them.
• Master the basics of programming in JavaScript.
• Use WebdriverIO for automated application testing.
• Use Git as a versioning tool to manage automation scripts.
• Be able to run, evaluate and fix automated tests in the UI layer.
In the Czechitas digital academy, we also learned the basics of JavaScript, which later came in very handy. When working with ServiceNow, JavaScript is used for both FrontEnd and BackEnd development, but I will write about that in the next part, so stay tunned!
Junior ServiceNow Consultant
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