By Davis Ansons – Associate BI Engineering
As an associate, my day-to-day activities can vary a lot, ranging from completing client work, attending meetings, partaking in Agile ceremonies, and completing training towards certifications or general skills development.
My day usually starts with an internal daily stand-up meeting. These meetings are a type of roundtable discussion. During the sessions, members of the team summarise progress made the previous day. It’s also an opportunity to raise any blockers that will need to be resolved so work can continue.
Most of my day is doing development work for client projects. Depending on the requirements this might involve developing data warehousing solutions using tools such as Snowflake and DBT or improving the client’s reporting capabilities by creating dashboards using Power BI or Tableau.
Ways of working
synvert TCM (formally Crimson Macaw) work closely with the client to gather requirements for solutions to the business or data problems they wish to resolve. We use a tool called Jira to capture and prioritise requirements. Here we create stories and tickets which for developers to work on. I start each day by checking the Jira board to review the tickets assigned to me. These to direct the development I will focus on that day. I also work closely with my delivery lead to communicate any blockers I am facing.
Fortnightly, I attend a sprint planning session and retrospective meeting. Sprint planning sessions are used by our squad to determine what our goal is for the upcoming sprint. It determines what tasks are to be completed. We use methods such as story point poker to determine the complexity of the tasks. This is a great opportunity for the team to raise any potential issues.
Retrospective meetings occur at the end of each sprint. They help us identify the positives and negatives experienced during the last sprint. Our team uses the Stop, Start, and Continue approach. It develops a list of improvements we plan to make in the next sprint.
Associates typically get more time to self-study. This means I may spend part of my day working towards getting certified with tools such as AWS. I do more general study through reading books and completing courses to help me strengthen any development areas. I also receive a lot of support from more senior members of the team. If ever unsure about how to complete a task, I can easily arrange a session with someone more experienced for mentoring and guidance.
Summary
The role of an Associate at synvert TCM is very exciting. It provides the ideal starting point for people who are new to the industry. The combination of self-study and working with clients across different industries creates the perfect learning environment. Paired with support from highly experienced people ensures you are making steady progress in your career.
Find more from our ‘A Day in the Life’ blog series here.
