Omar Hirey

Day in the life:

Hi! My name is Omar and I am grateful to be a Graduate Consultant at Intergen as part of their 2021 Graduate Intake. Today is the 22nd of June which means it’s been close to 5 months with Intergen. I thought I would share with you what my day is like as a graduate consultant within the Business Applications team in Wellington.

6:00 – 7:30 AM – Morning Routine

I have an alarm set for 6am, but I usually wake up before that as I am definitely a morning person! I start my day with a workout, then it is back home for breakfast and a coffee. By 7:45 I am walking to the bus stop.

8:30 AM – Arrive at Work

The question is… catch the elevator to level 3 or use the stairs? I choose the easy option, the elevator! The first thing I do is set-up my computer and monitors, then check my emails. After checking my emails I have a good idea of what the day will consist of and what tasks are ahead of me.

9:30 AM – Daily Stand Up

Each morning at 9:30am the team comes together for a stand-up which gives everyone in the project a chance to tell the team what they worked on yesterday, what they plan to do today, and what challenges we may need help with. We also use this time to see how we are progressing with our current sprint board (the sprint board maps out all of the individual tasks that need to be completed by a certain date and is just one phase of the project).

10:00 AM – Sprint Planning

When we start one a new iteration of a project, we go through weekly sprint planning. The goal here is to define the user stories that need to be delivered and understand how it can be achieved. This is done in collaboration with the client and a scrum master, product owner and the project team. These are a great learning opportunity as I get to listen in to other members of the team and hear what they are working on and work out how I can help them.

11:00 AM – Building & Configuring

As a consultant, I get a wide range of different tasks assigned to me. Depending on the project you’re in you will start to utilize different software tools to build ad implement features within a user story. If I get stuck on a task, I can easily turn to one of the senior consultants in my team for help. They are always willing to answer my questions!

12:00 PM - Lunch

When lunch rolls around, the options in the Press Hall eatery (which is just below the Intergen office) are endless. I do treat myself on Friday to lunch and always end up getting sushi from Yoshi (well worth it!). if it’s one of those days where you ‘can’t beat Wellington on a good day’ I tend to go for a walk outside with my friends. Intergen is really close to Civic Square so it doesn’t take long to get to the waterfront.

1:00 PM – Project Work

In the afternoon I continue to work on asks that have been assigned to me from the current sprint. When I finish a task, I will assign it to another team member for review. We do a lot of peer review within the team to ensure everyone is working effectively. I hen push these to a test environment where a tester would test the features that have been built. If issues (bugs) are raised, the tasks are then passed back to me to fix.

5:30 PM – Home Time

By 5:30 it is time to go home. I say my goodbyes to my team and head out onto Willis Street to catch the bus home. Day done!