Anne Coogan
Business Consultant at Boxever Limited, Dublin
The job
I work as a business consultant which can sometimes involve leading a project, working as a PM or engaging as a business analyst where the business needs more day to day on the business’s current systems and processes to see how the application is going to refine or work with given day to day activities. I engage with a team of technical engineers and non technical personnel on both the customer and client side of a project and my key responsibility is to ensure all decisions are documented and communicated in a way that can be consumed by the stakeholders of the project, at any time during the project’s lifecycle. I take the client’s requirements, and document, and work with a engineer to turn these requirements into technical specifications and work with the engineer to ensure these requirements are met by the solution we are providing.
Professional beliefs
What does it take to be successful?
Have a “have a go attitude” and pulling together as a team, in a social environment that is open to input from all bottom up as well as top down. The ability to communicate freely needs to be nurtured in order to successfully accomplish true collaboration.
In order to be successful, one must be able to communicate one’s ideas clearly, sometimes in a difficult environment, usually customer, and also knowing the appropriate medium to use for a given idea and/or audience.
Compromises.
• Yes, my time has to be flexible towards my job, there are times I will have to put in long hours, but then I know I can take this time back at another stage of a project.
• Also, I may have a list of targets to be achieved on a given day which may all change over the course of the day leaving one feeling they’ve achieved very little so it’s important to take the time to do a retrospective to note what was actually accomplished.
• Technology is not known for looking after employees very well when it comes to setting up your future, with health and pension for example, however the remuneration is such that you can set these up personal plans for yourself.
It is very important to be able to engage freely with all levels of the organisation. A team member will need a high level of detail, such as ramping up a colleague to join a project which is in mid-flow as compared to the ability to get across the main points to a member of management, a status update on a project.
Technology is actually a very forgiving area, as often we are trying something new that hasn’t been tried before, and it is important to have that “have a go” attitude.
Education
I undertook a part time degree while working as a Legal Personal Assistant in Business Information Systems which had a nice balance of management (soft) and technical skills which I felt suited the stage of my life I was undertaking my career change. I hoped to use that in legal but due to an economic downturn I decided to take control of the situation and started a hDip in Computer Science in Cloud and Web Technologies as this was a year long course which included an internship, which was important for me to start gaining some industry experience.
I was kept on by the Company I did my internship, working with Microsoft technologies and undertaking CPD courses with those technologies.
I decided to apply my skills to another technology to build on my experience with Microsoft technologies, working with an inhouse solution providing personalisation to airline websites.
Skills
Communication – ability to use different mediums to communicate a requirement as a solution. Firstly to assure the business of an understanding of what they do today (As Is) and from there understand where they want to go (To Be) and to know whether the best way to communicate, e.g. written, process diagram, verbal etc.
Understanding of the technology to the end user level – end user experience
Work as a team member
Turn business requirements to something that can be consumed by technical engineers
Ability to write meaningful test scripts
Ability to adopt and adapt to the role required for a given project
Outside work
I get to a yoga class once I week
I am currently studying to teach the Alexander Technique, year 1 of a 4 year course
Hill running/walking