Joanna Ucińska, eCommerce Business Analyst tells us how she combines various IT roles in her job
As an eCommerce Business Analyst you have a chance to work in various roles. Could you share with us a little more about it?
The truth is that under ‘analyst’ role I have an opportunity to try very different IT paths. The basis of my daily tasks is configuration of e-commerce platform that my team sets up for the client and investigation of system related issues. I also work on client’s requirements and I pass them to developers. Preparing documentation and training materials for future system users is also a part of my job. Moreover, from time to time I go into UX design field and I prepare mockups or into testing when I run some manual tests. Last but not least, there is a space for tasks usually associated with ‘classic’ ‘analytical’ job when I work with data in excel or focus on business process mapping. Business analysis is very far from boring!
What do you like most about working in IT?
The versatility of my job, which shows me possible ways for future development in IT and is a constant opportunity to learn. The fact that I can see how complex software product is delivered and I can be an active part of this process is very important, too. Another thing worth to mention is that I work with people, either with my team or with client, so it’s definitely not just excel or system.
You’ve changed your career path into IT recently. What inspired you and what were the milestones that led to your first job?
The pivotal moment when I started thinking that I would like to work in IT was during Erasmus exchange in the Netherlands, where I was learning about big data. The whole group was divided into small teams and our main goal was to deliver a data related MVP. I saw that working on software can be really interesting and challenging and that it could allow me to continuously learn, be close to the new technologies and work with people.
The next milestone was Carrots Academy organized by Geek Girls Carrots and Accenture. I was enrolled into the eCommerce path and participated in a course, during which I gained knowledge about eCommerce and worked on a group project. Then I was successfully recruited to Accenture and it’s been a year since I’m an eCommerce analyst.
What are the most useful resources from which you learn (books, webinars etc.)?
The resources are different but may be divided into two groups: Internet and meetups.
From resources available online the most useful for me are e-Learning courses and tutorials (e.g. Basic MySQL Tutorial since I’ve started learning MySQL recently), books (e.g. Scrum Body of Knowledge) and blogs – the IT-connected blogoshpere is vast and really helpful.
Meetups are for me a great source of inspirations to follow and stay updated with other new technologies. They are also a great booster for networking, not to mention that you can sometimes learn something very practical, too.
What would you advise to a person who’d like to follow your steps?
If you are interested in eCommerce, learn about eCommerce business processes and eCommerce systems configuration. Remember that ability to set up some system rules, check how different parameters are working and curiosity why something is not working as expected is more important than knowledge of a particular system, so you can train on any eCommerce platform (WordPress, Magento Community version, etc.).
The knowledge of Excel and Power Point is a basis. A good idea would be to learn at least some basis about UX design and project management and tools related to it (e.g. Jira, Trello). Additional advantage would be to get to know how technical documentation look like.
Regarding the core technical field – eCommerce, BI, SAP etc. – there are many different tools, nevertheless one of the most important things is the ability to learn quickly and willingness to do it.
