Author: Umesh Bugata is a Community Captain and Senior Software Engineer at Wipro.
When I look back on my journey as a developer, the key areas that I focus on are my technical skills and soft skills and maintaining a balance between them. These include having sound technical knowledge of the tool, good understanding of the business domain, enhancing user experience, and aligning with the business goals. Here’s a breakdown of key areas to focus on!
🛠️ Mastering the tool
- Acquiring technical skills – The Board Academy is the best medium to kickstart your journey. Level 100 covers basics and helps any user to get started with development, Level 200 gives a hands-on experience on building a planning solution on Board. Level 200 is a wonderfully crafted course that takes us to the next level and makes us ready to work on real projects. Level 300 covers advanced applications like security, system administration and user access settings. Give it a shot!
I give credit to Level 300 for helping me and my team set up security access for one of our customers. In addition, the Board Manual has a clear set of instructions about everything that one would want to know about the various elements of the tool. Though I make use of the Manual every now and then whenever I feel the need to do so, one object that I recently picked up from it is Nexel. It covers everything the one needs to know to start implementing Nexel – a powerful object that has made my life easier!
- Hands on experience – The most important aspect of mastering Board is to have hands-on experience in building a solution. Initially, I started working on proof of concepts (POC) which helped me know the tool to a good extent. Even though POCs are not full-scale projects, they do give us ideas on how to approach a problem and be prepared for what’s coming. I played around with objects like Nexel, block format, templates, and rules while building POCs and eventually got confident in using them in real projects.
📊 Understanding the Business
- Domain knowledge – Being technically sound is good but it limits our capabilities as consultants. It is imperative to know key Enterprise Performance Management concepts like budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, and planning which helps understand requirements well before building a solution. Good business understanding saves time and efforts for all stakeholders and enhances customer experience.
- System Integration – Board is a powerful tool as far as integration with other ERP systems and BI tools is concerned. Understanding how to integrate with these systems is crucial for delivering value to customers.
👩💼User-centric solutions
- User Interface – focusing on UI/UX is crucial as it directly impacts user satisfaction and engagement leading to happy users. Digital experience must be intuitive, enjoyable, and effective.
- User Feedback – Actively seeking feedback from customers helps in understanding their pain points and requirements better. Regular meetings (once or twice weekly) to discuss development progress and making changes to the solution, as and when required really helped my team provide value.
✍️ Collaboration
- Internal as well as cross-functional collaboration - I would not have been able to achieve anything without the help of my colleagues and team. Communication and collaboration are extremely important to be successful in our area of work. Sharing knowledge and experiences help each other tackle challenging tasks in hand which eventually leads to a happy customer.
- Documentation – It is always helpful if there is a proper documentation in place. This ensures the system can be maintained easily by others in the future.
💡 Extending the learning curve
- I try to learn as much as I can through discussions with peers, taking up certifications to expand knowledge, documenting challenging tasks to be able to tackle them in future, and so on. Technologies evolve rapidly hence it is essential to be proactive in keeping up with new updates.
To summarize, I would conclude that as a developer technical skills are important but it is equally important to have the ability to collaborate with stakeholders, understand business needs and translate them into solutions that sets us apart.
What do you focus on in your Board journey? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
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