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I think I see what you mean. I choosed that subject because of the question that was asked at Christians session. For sure I did some interpretation on that question and maybe the original questioner didn't mean all of that.
It was just the starting point of a great discussion.


Of course there'll be great opportunities for NAV developers. But keep in mind that not all NAV developers are able to do good business analysis and some of them just don't want to do something like that. I know there're many possible ways. I think Kamil painted that picture of team collaboration of developers with different skills participating from each other. That could also be very interesting.

I don't see a clear picture of what will be needed in future for a certain company. So, the general question would be, how could you decide from a company's point of view how to go on with your current team. I mean the same question could be also interesting for an individual. First of all you have to decide what you want to do in future and afterwards choose the way of change. But you won't know if your company will need someone like you when you travelled that way. Of course you could talk to your boss and ask him about his plans, but maybe you won't get the right answer. Not because your boss is lying or don't want to tell you some internals, but just because he don't know it better. That would mean you have to consider that you maybe have to change your company when you decide for a certain way.

Just curious, do you see the business analyst as more important than the developer? I see them as equals personally. Without proper analysis you can't do the right work and without proper development you can't do the work right.



I asked myself the same question a few years ago. Do I want to stay with NAV? If I do what do I want to do with it? For me, I have absolutely zero interest in doing anything other than development full-time. Part of the territory is that you get to do other types of work, analysis / project management / etc, in this line of development, which is nice. I decided that for me, and for the next few years, the best thing I could do was to continue learning about NAV, but learn .NET as well. The RTC was not necessarily a deciding factor, but it helped. I could semi-return to what I really enjoy doing, which is more user-centric. I studied things like Human Computer Interaction, Information Visualization, Educational Technology, etc. Those things applied in Classic, but they were very limited.

This might sound a little weird, but I think a great NAV developer needs to be an expert at NAV, not NAV programming. That in turn may lead you down some of the more functional roles, but it doesn't have to. You can just as easily go towards .NET, or even SQL Administration / Programming / Reporting. Those two are just the technologies that will apply to every installation. You could learn more about web portals, business intelligence solutions, SharePoint / Performance Point. I guess the point is, these are things you should either decide on your own that you want to do, or be talking with your manager about doing. Knowledge is knowledge and it can only strengthen your position.