TA Professional Perspectives

 I have attended dozens upon dozens of professional presentations, IT related or not, and after a while I started noticing how concepts, processes or outcomes are always neatly packed in some good looking graph, diagram or table. Those graphs, diagrams or tables are partitioned in eye pleasing proportions and the illustrated concepts, processes or outcomes are firmly encased in them. Most of the time, there are three or four partitions, equal in size, because this is what the page would hold or it is easier to draw.  The world is chaotic and hard to describe or illustrate. Sure a model of any kind needs to simplify things in order to communicate them. But I can't help wondering, isn't the author succumbing to the temptation of making order in the universe by collapsing stuff into those visuals, as opposed to writing a competent and complete text? Good text is more difficult to do, and even when it is good,  fewer may be willing or able to follow it. Text does not gra...

Continued from September ... Unfortunately, those were not exceptions. As candidates, we are agonizing over grammar, punctuation and yes, content. But the likes of CIBC disrespect their potential employees allowing glaring misspelling and long but hollow sounding job descriptions. To start with a grossly misspelled first word is indeed a performance and is making this job and CIBC stand out! Do I care reading further? My impression is already formed, just like an employer would form the same impression had I forwarded a resume containing the same typo. Or maybe I am wrong, only employees have to have good grammar, HR and hiring managers, always having the thicker end of the stick, are excepted. Or maybe grammar is not that important after all, someone can still be a valuable employee/employer despite typos and hollow sentences, but if so, why entertain this whole circus? Maybe job descriptions and resumes should just be ATS style, to the point, forget chest-pounding on the employee si...

 How not to do CT: a real life experience This article eventually was not published, as the body for which it was destined deemed it too negative. Well, everyone knows we learn more from mistakes than from successes. In my opinion, it is better to publish a "negative" story once in a while rather than yet another positive platitude that will not offend anyone but won't engage the readers either. https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2019/10/23/13/47/cloud-server-not-working-4571660__340.png Migration to the Cloud was sold to our client as being the silver bullet to their cost-cutting efforts [Big Mistake #1] and the basis for their continuous business with our firm. A cross-divisional, cross-functional and cross-country team was assembled for this task. I was on the application testing side of things, together with the other co-located developers-cum-testers who had been the steady stewards of this application for many years. Our mission was handed down to us from higher above:...

Here we go again and again from Glassdoor: typos in orange, brainos in blue, plus my analysis of the job description ...looks like I am becoming a forensic editor instead of an employed BA!  Looks like it may be the same person authoring these job descriptions: missing words, pairing nouns in plural with verbs in singular, uneven tone (mixing imperatives with continuous tense), verbosity, undecided punctuation style. And that botched 'thoroughly thought through' ...what a pen twister! And then...what exactly is "professional acumen"? what exactly are "testing documents"? what does it mean "meeting requirements" ... requirements and deadlines packaged together in one sentence will offend the "professional acumen" of any genuine business analyst. The specific technical qualifications are not listed. Last but not least, lack of visual separators makes the lecture of  this compact text uninviting and inefficient. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...

  ACCESSIBILITY: a new dimension for IT and society By Tatiana Andronache Published in Galt Global Review (2008?) Everyone in North America is used to the wheelchair sign in parking spots or the ramp accessing the main entrance of official buildings. Maybe not everyone has felt the six “bumps” on the Bank of Canada’s $20 bill, or has used the Jitterbug, the cell phone with big keys and no games, or has navigated a website without using the mouse. All these – and many more – are outcomes of the quest for accessibility.   From philanthropy to business transformation Accessibility is a fairly new concept and has certainly gained a lot of ground since the turn of the millennium. Generally defined as the degree to which a product or service is accessible to a population diverse in physical and mental ability, accessibility is the counter-act to disability.   Societal changes have propelled accessibility from the realm of philanthropy to that of compliance and, most recent...

  As job applicants we must write grammatically perfect resumes. I wonder why... just look at this job description, that one is supposed to match (so we are instructed)... I can't believe someone that writes like this has a job... Pure typos are in orange, brainos are in blue, and I marked nothing related to the fluffiness of it all and how it shows the person who wrote this has very little understanding of the "typical day"... 80% of the job description could be applicable to almost any other similar job... To think this very person may decide which application goes for the next step makes ATSs look a preferable alternative! Consultant - GuideWire Insurance Suite - Business Analyst Apply now » Date Posted:  Sep 20, 2020 Reference Code:  53021-en_US Job Type:  Permanent  Primary Location:  Toronto, Ontario, Canada  All Available Locations:  Toronto  Be part of a firm where you are valued for your unique strengths and where everyone feels a se...