Since about two years ago, I had been considering working on my a Master's degree. At the time, I had 8 years of IT experience including web development, desktop hardware and software, programming, server hardware and software, strategic management, project management, and on and on and on. With eight years of experience, I knew that I wanted to move my career in the direction of overall IT management - the strategy, the project management, the relationship management. Working with my wonderful supervisor who is an Assistant Vice President for Business and Finance, we grew my position into having a lot more management possibilities. I went from being an Information Management Specialist to being Manager of Information Systems.

So if I was on the IT management career path, why work on a Master's degree? My experience in the field is strong since I have worked in a variety of organizations and gained a variety of experiences with the help of some good team members and business-side supervisors. A Master's degree adds one a level of credit to my resume that experience can not do alone while also giving me an opportunity to fill in some gaps in my IT management knowledge.

Afterall this is what an IT manager does, or at least what I believe my style is - find the weaknesses or opportunities and work on them. Every year, CIO magazine does a State of the CIO survery of its readers to gauge the current trends of IT management in organizations that have a CIO-type position. In this year's survey, there is a discussion of four archetypes of CIO - turnaround, operational, business leader, and innovative. Reading through the article and taking their self-assessment quiz, I found that I am of the innovative CIO mold. My preferred method of running IT is to look at the business and find ways in which IT can improve how the organization operates and what services it offers its customers. The survey came out after I wrote my earlier blog post about Innovation vs. Optimization, so I certainly think labelling myself as an innovative IT manager and future-CIO is accurate. In that post I talked more about what makes an IT manager "innovative." As I continue my studies this semester, I am excited to find new ways to innovate in my current position.