I just "re-learned" a great lesson, thanks to one of my managers. When you are in a situation or a role in a project that you don't care for, don't campaign to do something else, as he called it. I'd call it complaining, but he is a lot more polite. Create a business case as to why you should be doing something else. Because people really don’t care to hear you complain about something, you need to bring something to the table.
Here’s a scenario:
Say that you’ve been in the role of DBA (Data Base Administrator) for the last six months. And being a DBA is not what rolls your socks up; you’d really like to be working on a project where you will be coding in C#. Well this is what you should do, in an email or whatever other medium you choose:
1. State that for the past six months in my role what successes you had.
2. What you would like to be doing.
3. Why you should be doing what you want to do.
4. The benefit for your manager in placing you there.
5. What benefit you will receive from doing what you want.
The great thing about this is that you are not just complaining you are bringing a solution to what you perceive as the problem. This is what everyone wants, especially managers.
It will also help you gather your thoughts into a coherent argument for what you want to do. If you can’t do that, then you really have no reason to be moved to a different role.
You could apply this to things beyond your role in projects. You can apply this to why you want to move from VB4 to C#, from regular TV to Satellite TIVO TV or why you should be promoted in general.