Business Analyst Review

My role as a Business Analyst in the Interface Management Team consists of collaborating with the team of analysts to translate customer requirements into deliverables through a ‘discovery’ process. This process includes performing interface setup, configuration and testing on middleware applications through the development and test phase, while supporting the deployment of changes into our production environment in the delivery phase.  An important part of my role and responsibilities this year was participating and supporting portfolio application teams in the transitioning from the legacy general ledger to the new SAP platform iERP (Intergrated Enterprise Resource Planning) general ledger. This will consist of identifying and fulfilling portfolio application teams with their interfacing needs, selecting the best suited file format for them and potentially resulting in mapping exercises for their data to successfully feed through to the ledger in their specified file format.  Throughout the year, I will support the management and coordination of projects, ranging from team led initiatives to global projects. This can include recording, managing and tracking status of project work, acting as a team focal point and representing the team on project calls, and reporting back to the team in calls or mail communications. As we work in an ‘agile’ squad, all agile principles, practices and tools will be performed, while also performing the Iteration Manager role in some of the planning, retrospective and daily squad meetings.

I have learnt a large variety of new skills, the first one being which I set out to improve at the beginning of my placement which was my organisation skills. I set out to use trello to plan out my to-do list for the day and week, with a wall of work layout with work that was in progress, in the backlog or finished. This was helpful as it was a visual representation of various work I needed to do and could prioritise accordingly. My technical knowledge has developed significant amounts due to my job involving a lot of SAP expertise, and I am competent on two SAP softwares - SAP ECC & S/4 Hana. IBM has so many learning opportunities on their internal learning software (YourLearning) therefore I took this opportunity to learn different ways of working such as agile, I needed this to work efficiently and effectively in my team. I have gained two agile certifications, design thinking certification, cloud certification and a people skills certification. Overall, my communication skills, adaptability and confidence has increased over the past year, working in a diverse team and working with clients from all over the world. My communication needed to be clear but impactful to turn customer requirements into effective solutions.

Yes, I was giving responsibility from my first month of joining. The first couple of months, I was already joining external calls and acting as a team focal. This didn't always mean to speak on these external calls but relay any important information for the team on our daily calls. I also started to complete independent testing for our migration from legacy to the SAP software, and report results to the application team we were working with. I held the Iteration Manager role for certain iterations within my first couple months, leading and facilitating all internal meetings for the year including planning, retrospective and daily squad meetings. From these meetings, I effectively tracked and documented changes across our squad and partner squads on Jira. Throughout, my responsibility grew along with my knowledge so I started to work individually with application/customer teams to understand their requirements and turn them into effective solutions. I led error analysis due to the complexity of the transactions, worked independently on testing and communicated directly with teams and the lead accountants to resolve testing complexities or issues. I started to take on the responsibility of improving the team's efficiency and how we could improve this, I took on projects to reform and innovate out-of-date processes to shorten workloads for others and increase the productivity of the squad.

The support and guidance I had in my placement was excellent. I had my task manager who was the manager of our team, she supported me throughout checking up on me, and having regular meetings to see how I was doing. I worked very closely with a senior colleague in my team who had the time to help me in my first couple months, me and him worked on many projects together. Outside of my team, I had a foundation manager who I had regular meetings to check up on how I was doing and any support I needed. This is who I had my 3 month, 6 months and will have my 12 month review with.

The company culture and general atmosphere was great, everyone was very welcoming in the team, including the colleagues in Hungary who made me feel very welcome & made sure I was settling in. At IBM, everyone is happy to speak to you about anything you need and everyone is very positive in their day-to-day. The offices have a great collaborative feel to them and allow you to work freely with others, but can crack on with any work you need to complete. My managers always stressed the importance of stepping away from your computer at lunch time and at the end of the day, also allowing myself to any external appointments if need be. I can safely say that IBM has a wonderful culture and atmosphere, and any employee would be lucky to work in this environment.

I can honestly say I have loved my time at IBM so far and it is a shame it is coming towards the end. The friends, connections and skills I have gained over the year will benefit me throughout my career. But, the most important thing is that I have loved coming to work every day, I am a positive person so to spread that to other colleagues and get the same back, has been wonderful. I have enjoyed the work I have been doing as it there has been such a variety of different things I have worked on, to testing on software, to setting up a mentoring scheme for university students. I have enjoyed it that much, that it has made me want to apply for the graduate scheme and stay on as long as possible at IBM.

Yes

The advice I would give is to take every opportunity you can get, everything will be worth it and you may not think that this will be valuable to me, but it will. Definitely put yourself out there and get to know other people, not just placement students. Set up calls with senior colleagues and graduates, this is something I was afraid to do at first but now is normal for me. Networking can be scary at first but the more you do it, the better it gets.