Lack of experience v.s lack of skills

I have been working in the same company for almost 3 years now, and still doing the same project. From a 2 man team to 4 man, 5 man and in the end back to 2 man; people come and people gone, but I am still here. Thou the project is not a actually a failure (I hope), it is not a success either.

Although the management has decided to terminate the project, yet, the project still haunts me every now and then. Old bugs come back alive from the grave, new bugs creeping in, and logic that were never captured, crippled the system. I have worked on the project and watched the project grows from scratch, while I am happy to see people using the system, but it is also very painful to see how handicaped the system is.

I was only a junior engineer when I join the company, although I am no longer a junior engineer, I often felt that there are something missing from myself. I must admit that I have gained alot of skills and experience from the project, yet since the absent of my project lead, I have been stagnant. With the project still on going, I have lost a guide, a guru, a friend.

How ignorant I was, to think that with my tidy little bit of skills and experience, I could lead the project without any problems. Now, thinking about it, I often regret about my stupidity and ignorance.

Reflecting back on the development states, I have to admit that, experience plays a very big and important part. A part that I am lacking. Or was it skills that plays a more important part? I guess both are equally important and unseperatable. To lead a project, you need experience to approach and manage the project. You also need skills to analysis and develop the project. In both cases, I lack both experience and skills.

Right before the Chinese New Year, my boss offer me an alternative, moving into the management path, project management path. Thinking negatively, I would feel that, I was ask to do so because of my lacking in skills set. In other words, which mean he can't find any project that I am capable to work in. Thinking positively, I felt that, the boss see the potential in me, and would like to train me more in management path.

Sometimes it is hard to choose whether to think positively or negatively. Both seems to be probable.

-- ekoay, confused.

"You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it."
-- Albert Camus, 1913-1960

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."
-- Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963

"Nothing fails like success."
-- Gerald Nachman