Being a business analysis intern at BuSI

Hi, I’m Quentin and I’ve been a Business Analyst at BuSI for two years thanks to my work-study internship.

The premises

A little less than two years ago I decided to start a Master’s degree in Business Analysis at the ICHEC/ECAM in Brussels. To do this, I needed a company where I could do a two-year internship, and where I could also be paid (which is pretty uncommon in Belgium). Few companies were willing to take the risk of actually investing in an intern since they couldn’t know whether we would stay after the two years or not. However, only a few hours after I registered at the ICHEC/ECAM, I was contacted by a company: Business & Systems Integration, aka BuSI. After a first interview, a small research and knowledge assignment and a second interview, BuSI officially offered me to do my internship within the company.

What I liked about BuSI was the family spirit they put forward, the size of the company as an SME, but above all the fact that it was a consulting company that would perhaps allow me to work for several clients.

That’s exactly what happened. I had the chance to work for three different clients in three different ways.

Projects I worked on

The first project I worked on was for the Public Service of Wallonia (SPW). The special side of it was that the project was developed within the BuSI premises. This project allowed me to get my hands on everything from testing and test cases, writing text use cases, to client validation tests.

After about three months, I was given the opportunity to move on to a second project which, this time, would take place directly at the client’s site: MLOZ. Contrary to the first project, I was no longer surrounded by BuSI colleagues. I was a little more on my own, even though I was working with a Business Analyst from MLOZ. This second project allowed me to work for the first time in an Agile environment. Moreover, I was able to put into practice everything I knew about BPMN and User Stories and learnt what 7-dimensional User Stories are.

However, I sometimes encountered difficulties in the diagrams I had to deliver or in the way I worked. Luckily, being at a client’s site does not mean for BuSI that they are abandoning you and I have always been able to call on the leader of the BuSI Analysis cell to get some piece of advice.

Six months later, my role in this second project had come to an end. So I was able to change client again. This third and final client of my internship was the FPS Foreign Affairs. There I met up with some BuSI colleagues and I was able to put my knowledge of the Scrum methodology into practice, on one hand, and my knowledge of prototyping, on the other. As soon as I arrived, I was able to manage a small application development project by myself, with three developers because the Senior Business Analyst left me in charge, so he could take care of the other projects he had to manage.

It was very challenging because after only one year of study I was given the opportunity to show what I was capable of. It was an increase in responsibilities and I had to be autonomous and resourceful. This allowed me to further develop my soft and hard skills such as communication, team management, elicitation of requirements and needs, but also my technical knowledge as well as my communication with developers.

After three months, I was integrated into a new team that takes care of five applications with four different Product Owners. Within this team I was able to use all the skills I acquired so far, since the Senior Business Analyst and I were in charge of the As Is and To Be analysis, the testing, the communication with the Product Owners and the management of all Scrum events.

Discover the BuSI Academy program

Two years later…

All these experiences during my internship at BuSI allowed me, after two years, to complete my Master’s degree and become an accomplished Business Analyst. However, this internship also taught me that we have to keep on learning because there are always things to learn or improve.

After two years of internship with them, I’m happy to say that I eventually signed a contract with BuSI. I have kept my position as a Business Analyst at the FPS Foreign Affairs where I continue to improve sprint after sprint the way of work of the team I manage for almost ten months now.

I’m convinced that more classical studies wouldn’t have allowed me to evolve so much and to learn so the subtleties that you can only find when you’re in the field. A faster evolution and the confrontation with the reality of the field are the two great strengths of these alternating studies.