Teetering on the brink

NeverendingDMP

Congratulations to you both on the finalised exam results!!

Cherryfudge

I read about the potential BA role with fascination - perhaps Duolingo could feature your job as a new language, as it sounds like it to me!   But I think I get the gist of it: if you are going to move forward in this employment, this is probably as good an option as you are likely to see in the foreseeable future. 

Congratulations to your DD - fantastic news! And doubly great as you get the refund and all of a sudden the money takes a big jump forwards.

Does your Olio day have to be the same day every week? If you tried eight days or ten days, would that enable you to eat through more, or would you be short of things to base your meals round? The longer time could also take the pressure off if it's an effort to go out for items in the evening.

EatingBeans

Haha Thanks for the perfect summation of my long winded job situation! Sometimes I forget that there is another world outside and people wont understand what I am babbling on about. 😬

Olio-wise, a set day is good for me purely down to the fact that the late night runs disturbs my sleep. I had thought about going every two weeks but I just don’t have the freezer space and things that cannot be frozen have to be used up quickly. So I just need to be a bit more selective. It’s fine though - I am sure it will still be worth it and the pick ups are fairly close. That said, I have booked to pick up a few cookies, donuts, bread and tomatoes this morning from my favourite FWH. dd2 is really struggling to adjust to A level life as just going back to college is a lot after such a long time off. I thought a bit of free sugar might cheer her up. Just going for a couple of things is not great economically speaking but I have to go out for diesel anyway and this particular FWH is only a mile from my house so doesn’t really cost a lot in fuel to get there. 

hatch_five

EatingBeans said:

Honestly, I know I hate being a standard Business Analyst as I hate even the idea of documenting every last little requirement up front. It is literally the opposite I what I advocate on a daily basis - i.e. leave all the detail to the last responsible moment because you know what, change is inevitable! I really am better suited to promoting Agile. But, the reality is there are so few positions above me in the agile space where I work and I know full well that any that do come up will go to externals, so I have to either leave or consider a different role if I want to move up. In an ideal world I would hop to being a Product Manager but I know that I need to go up a level first, and realistically a Business Analyst role is a better fit than a Delivery Manager, albeit both should work as a stepping stone. I have been asking around a bit today and I know there is a push from management to encourage the new project to use at least part agile methods in its delivery, but I also know the Delivery Manager is pushing back and dead set against. That might give me an advantage as it might be viewed that I can effectively act as Scrum Master as well as BA and convert them from the inside (they’ve asked me to do this to a team before). Added to which, the project is looking at a Research Admin system and an integration with a finance system. As it happens, I spent 10years working in finance, and my very last role just so happens to have been working in the very Research admin/finance team that would be the key stakeholders for this work. So basically, if I don’t get this role there is something very off! And, I suppose if I have to be a BA for something, this project would probably be the least painful option. 

Your comment about a Research Admin system made me smile- looked after PhD student admin for several years and we spent the whole time pushing for a better way of managing research students that a mixture of SITS, Skillsforge and dodgy Excel Spreadsheets- got nowhere, we kept getting told it would be looked at, but nothing ever happened. I was involved in the procurement of a Course Management system, which took years, was massively over budget and the system we finally got was so clunky no academics would use it and admin cursed it (nothing like what we had scoped for). Now at another institution and running into the same problems with introducing Aptem for apprenticeship management- I have come to the conclusion that nearly all HE institutions are just really bad at getting systems that actually come in on time, on budget and work! Good Luck.....