5 ideas on how else an analyst can develop himself
Hi all!
My name is Tatyana Rylovnikova. I am a leading analyst at the Vi.Tech company, and also the ideological inspirer of the club of St. Petersburg Odinesniks, the host and author of the podcast “Analysts at the Microphone,” a speaker and moderator at the A&UP conference.
For several years now, the only things I have lacked for professional development are courses, certifications, videos and books. I would like to share with you my methods of development, using my example I will tell you 5 ways how else an analyst can develop:
1. Contact a mentor
At a certain level of development in the profession, a specialist is faced with tasks that become increasingly difficult to solve (or at least understand where to start). But sometimes such tasks can be more of an organizational nature. At the company, I was faced with the task of organizing documentation (instructions, technical specifications, and so on), so that I could just get started – I turned to a mentor (Artem, thank you very much). As a result, my idea of the task became more concrete and the path became clearer.
2. Become a mentor yourself
As the saying goes, “The best way to learn something is to teach it to others.” Firstly, you understand the difficulties your colleagues in the workshop face. Secondly, you develop communication and training skills for other people. Thirdly, you also receive their experience in return. Yes, most likely you have more experience overall, but each person has some unique experience, and in this communication you can also get it.
3. Book club
I was faced with the fact that the more I immerse myself in the profession, the more voluminous the literature becomes. For example, there was a lot of talk about Karl Wiegers’ book “Software Requirements Engineering.” I even bought it and started reading it, but given the volume of material, I got lost in it. Then I thought it would be cool to read a book with colleagues. I started a book club for analysts at work, we read 2 chapters every 2 weeks and discuss them. The main benefit: the guys tell us what they have tried or would like to try and what it actually looks like in practice. The material is perceived much better. I’m also improving my organizational skills.
4. Networking, meetups, conferences
Various meetings are quite often held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, for analysts, for programmers, and so on. In St. Petersburg, these are Infostart, Analyst Days, the St. Petersburg Odinesnikov club, ProIT Fest, and so on. Within the framework of the Yellow Club, other cities are also covered (Voronezh, Lipetsk, Irkutsk, etc.). The Yellow Submarine opens its doors in Nizhny Novgorod. In fact, there are a lot of activities, both offline and online, but I, of course, recommend attending offline meetings. So, for example, I recently went to a DevRel meeting. I went without expectations, but on the way out I learned more about this direction and my understanding of the IT world became broader. Therefore, I recommend going not only to analyst meetings, but also sometimes taking on related professions. Also at such meetings you can meet colleagues; networking is a very important way to build connections. This is how new projects are born, or sometimes teams are formed; in general, communication is the best way to be in the profession and not lose touch with the world (otherwise we often get buried in our tasks and don’t see much interesting things around).
5. Become a speaker at a conference
Sharing knowledge is useful not only one-on-one, but also to a large audience. If you already have enough experience, then you need to learn to share it. In fact, new faces are needed at conferences, and if you thought that only those they know are hired to speak, then no, they hire those who have something to say. Being a speaker comes with a lot of perks: free participation in the conference (travel and accommodation most often too), the opportunity to express yourself, improving your public speaking skills, and, of course, new acquaintances.
I hope this article will be useful to the community. After re-reading it, I realized that these methods are suitable not only for analysts, but for any role/profession. Share your development methods in the comments, I’ll be glad to read.
