In the outsourcing world bench refers to group of resources who are not assigned to any project, but ready to be used immediately when the need arises.

After my last project I was put on “bench”. I was learning new technologies and deepening my existing knowledge, for example:

• read books and articles about Java concurrency
• created a web application in Zend Framework backed by MySQL
• learned about graph databases
• watched Channel 9 videos about WPF, Windows 8, and software development
• prototyped some ideas based on the things I learned

Technologies: PHP, Zend Framework, MySQL, Java, .NET, WPF

Tools used: Eclipse, Visual Studio