Rianna

8.00 AM

When working from home, I like to leave ample time for me to ease into the day. I wake up at 8 AM, do a bit of a stretch and head downstairs for breakfast. Since we’re currently in lockdown, today my Dad has decided to make some delicious corn fritters with avocado, toast and a poached egg for breakfast. After eating, I then proceed to feed my hungry cat and make some tea.   

8.45 AM

Before my 9AM meeting, I like to review my to-do list (which I always write the night before), check my emails and jot down talking points for my first few meetings.

9.00 AM

My first meeting of the day is with my mentor, I enjoy our weekly meetings as it is a space for me to share my learnings as well as discuss any challenges I’m currently facing. In our conversation today, we talked about the importance of communication and transparency within a team and how to carry out effective reflections.

9.30 AM

Twice a week I catch up with the Scrum Master in my team, we talk through the progress I’ve made on the work assigned to me, if I have any specific blockers, whether I need support and how he can provide the support I require for my work.

9.45 AM

It’s time for me to get up and stretch my legs! During my breaks I like to head to my front yard and complete a few reps of pull ups, I’m currently trying to work towards achieving a set of 10 reps within a set.

10.00 AM

I now have a solid block of time to work through my current tasks. Currently, I’m working on developing some data pipelines for the Open Banking program. In particular, I’m writing some Python code that calculates specific metrics based off data obtained from the various Open Banking APIs. Once this is completed, the business will be able to access this data with applications such as Power BI or Tableau to draw insights on customer behaviour and their data usage.

An impromptu call with one of the engineers on my team occurs during my focus time, but we manage to edit and review my completed code. After reviewing the code, I’m able to commit the code and send through all the required pull requests on Bit Bucket. The engineer in my team has approved all my requests which then allows me to deploy my code into the non-production environment via Azure DevOps.

12.00 PM

After a productive morning of work, I like to break up my day with some exercise. Today, I’ve decided to complete a quick 5KM run. I’m lucky to be living in an area with a lot of nature and beautiful views by the water, it makes the run even more enjoyable. Following my run, I have a quick shower and grab my lunch in time for my next meeting.

1.30 PM

It’s time for our daily stand-up meeting, each team member takes us through the progress they’ve made on the stories assigned to them. We also discuss any blockers and share any updates.

2.00 PM

Following my stand-up, I have a quick catchup with my buddy. When I first started at Westpac, she really helped me to settle in and she now continues to support me by answering any queries that I may have. Today we had a chat about the extra-curricular work we’re doing, different lockdown exercise challenges as well as what we’re currently working on.

2.30 PM

It’s been back-to-back for me today, this next meeting had a focus on engaging another team for the handover of some of our development tasks. I had to give a high-level overview of the solution design I have created for the data pipelines as well as answer any queries that the engineers had regarding this development work.

3.00 PM

I have found out that my deployment into the non-production environment has been unsuccessful. This chunk of time, I’m able to spend debugging the code that I’ve deployed. I’ve called the engineer in my team to work it out with him. We found that the root cause of the job failure was due to a single ‘}’ in the metadata file, it was hard to find especially in a file that stores the metadata in JSON format. After finding this bug, I’m able to redeploy the code using Azure DevOps.

4.30 PM

I end my working day with another coaching session, this time I’m chatting to a mentor in the operations team of Open Banking. His technical background and experience are rather insightful and although he makes tangents when explaining concepts, he always brings it back to the questions that I ask him about. Today we discussed the importance of reflecting – and how reflecting is important not only for what has passed, but how we can take these learnings and apply them to upcoming opportunities.

5.00 PM

I get up and stretch my legs again, happy with my level of productivity throughout the day. I typically complete 10-15 minutes of meditation, which helps to ground me.

5.30 PM

On a typical day outside of lockdown, Thursdays are usually my bouldering days and at this time I would be leaving the house for the bouldering gym. Since we’re in lockdown, I opt for a home workout or a session of yoga to end the day