Meet our Academy Consultants – Elena

Every year, people take their first major step into the world of tech through the Ten10 Academy. Take Elena, who is learning new technology skills every day and wanted to share her personal experience of starting client work as a software tester.

How do you feel you’ve transitioned from the Ten10 Academy to your client work?

I think starting any new job is a big transition, and starting on a client site eight months ago was no exception for me, especially since this is my first tech job! I was on the bench until I got an interview for a testing/QA role in finance, which is where I am now.

I have learned a great deal since starting on the client site. The first few months felt pretty overwhelming! It’s easy to assume the main learning curve will come from the specific area of work you expect to be involved with (in my case, testing). Although I have learned a lot, there was also a great deal of contextual understanding that was necessary for me to pick up too, such as the business rationale behind the changes that I would be testing in my day-to-day work. This involved learning a lot about the inner workings of the finance industry. Then there are the practical considerations of changing from working from home on the bench to commuting a few times per week, getting used to your new surroundings and meeting your colleagues, understanding how each team operates, and who is responsible for what projects. Although it was different to get used to a new routine, over time, I began to feel much more comfortable in my team, and the tools that I gained experience with during core training have enabled me to pick things up as I go along.

Take us through your placement and tell us what client teams you’ve worked with

Since starting with my client, I have worked with a team responsible for a large risk calculation engine that (put very simply) takes in trade information and provides financial risk data to other users. I can roughly divide the work I am involved in into two halves: migration projects and BAU testing.

Most of the projects that I have been involved with are migrations. There are lots of external systems from which our calculation engine gets trade information, but they are being migrated to one new system. This happens incrementally, with each system being decommissioned and the trade information being ‘migrated’ to the new one. Because of this, we have to make sure the flow of data through our systems still works as it should, so we carry out dry runs.

The other part of the work is keeping the calculation engine up and running, responding to any issues reported by users and adding in new functionality. The developers make these changes, and I test them.

What parts of the Ten10 Academy training have been most useful in your placement?

The Academy was great for understanding core tech concepts so that I was in a position to start learning things on my own. However, something that surprised me was how useful I found the training on project management methodologies. When I found out that my team worked in Agile, this was something I was familiar with, so I knew what to expect when people referred to the “current” or “next sprint”. I was also familiar with tracking work items using boards, understanding other people’s roles such as BA, PO or Scrum Master and how a retro works.

What is a normal working day or week for you?

My work involves a combination of BAU testing and migration practice runs. The testing side of things involves working with developers to understand the changes I will be testing, coming up with test cases, creating test evidence, and communicating with the developers to enable them to look into any issues.

When it comes to migrations, this generally involves following a runbook put together for the specific run I am testing, raising any issues with the team and documenting the potential resolutions to refer back to in future runs. The run itself can take anywhere from a couple of days to a week.

Have your roles or responsibilities changed during your time on placement?

As time has gone on, my responsibilities have increased. When I joined, the testing I was given was very simple, whereas now I understand a lot more about our systems and the financial products we deal with. I am able to test more complex changes, and I know who my point of contact will be for certain questions or issues. In the first few months, I also wasn’t as involved in the migrations side of the work. I shadowed my colleagues in a couple of different aspects of these (for instance, writing the runbook or carrying out an early run to give me an idea of how it worked), and more recently, I have been able to take responsibility for carrying out a migration practice run myself!

What technology tools, frameworks, and processes have you gained experience with since starting your client work?

Due to the calculation engine I mentioned earlier being developed in-house, a lot of the work also involves in-house systems and tools, which I use to simulate deals passing through from their origin systems into the various components, having calculations performed on them, and then producing reports on the calculations. When I have to look into our database of trade information, I use Microsoft SQL to query a copy of the database or to make any changes to one of these copies to simulate a test condition. The database is very large – over 100 tables – so since starting my role, I have developed knowledge of database design and how the data is related to each other. I have also had a lot of practice with certain areas of SQL, such as joins on multiple tables.

A lot of my day-to-day involves using Azure DevOps. This is used to manage code. A developer can check a change on the development branch, then to test this, I’ll need to build and deploy the latest changes to the test environment I’ll be using. Each month or so, there will be a release. This is where all of the tested and signed-off changes requested for the next version of our product will go into production, which involves taking a cut of the development branch and merging it into the production branch. We also manage our work items via Azure DevOps, wherein we can easily link certain code changes, making it easy to see and manage which code is associated with which piece of work.

We work in two-week ‘sprints’. At the end of a sprint, we will have a retrospective, during which we talk about what went well and what could have gone better in the last sprint, and figure out ways of implementing improvements for the next sprint. We will then have a sprint planning session where we will discuss which pieces of work need to be done in the next sprint, what our priorities are, anticipate any challenges, and roughly allocate work. In the middle of the sprint, we will have a short backlog review, where we check in with how we are doing this sprint, reassess how work is allocated, respond to any changes or issues, etc. We also use Azure DevOps to manage our retrospectives, sprint planning and backlog reviews.

How has your client supported your development?

Towards the beginning of my role, I spent a lot of time shadowing members of my team on the day-to-day testing work, and had several sessions with them on the systems we use and how they work. I was also thrown into some testing work within a couple of weeks of starting. Beyond this, I began to learn SQL in the between times or in the mornings when I came into the office, or through scheduled learning sessions with people to fill the gaps in my understanding.

As soon as I started on the client site, I had a conversation with my line manager/scrum master regarding expectations, as this helped me to plan my learning and development. I can also always ask general questions in the chat channel. This was something I struggled with a little during the first few months, and to be honest, still do – I sometimes worry about annoying people with all my questions, but it’s the best way to learn – no one can fault you for being proactive and curious!

If you are in a role like testing/QA or BA, there is a good chance you will need to learn a lot that is not directly within the scope of the work you do. For me, there is the testing element, but I also had to start understanding business goals and why the changes that I am testing are being made, understanding financial products, how financial risk works and what the client’s role is within that, alongside what regulations we have a responsibility to comply with.

So far, I am still in the same team I joined the client in, but when the opportunity arises, I’ll get to move to a different team to give me exposure to different areas of the work. This is something my client, in particular, likes to do with grads, so you get as much experience as possible.

What support have you received from Ten10 during your placement?

If I ever want to discuss my progress on the client site or have a question about certifications, reviews, etc., I have scheduled calls with the training team. Even when they have been teaching a new Academy, everyone has been super responsive and has cared about my personal development, despite how many of us there are with different clients.

Something I have found quite challenging when moving from the Academy to my client is monitoring my progress and knowing how well I am doing. As the only new starter on my team, I didn’t have anyone to compare my rate of progress with, and team members are often busy and cannot always provide feedback, so checking in with one of the trainers has been very useful. We also have a client monthly catch-up scheduled with the wellbeing team, where you can raise any concerns or just say hi. Recently, a monthly catch-up with our account manager and the Academy team has also been introduced, with the idea being that you can update them on what you have had going on at work and what you plan to do, so that they can vouch for you during reviews with a better understanding of what you have been up to.