Weeks 6 and 7 At QA Academy

Week 6

A month of training is nearly over! First thing Monday the group of 40 got split up into two groups, our group was going through databases for this week. We were given the task of creating the databases for NB Garden's new Inventory & Sales Management System using both MYSQL (in workbench) and Mongodb (NOSQL). I had little experience with SQL as I used it in my final year project but never had any proper training with databases so this week was very helpful, and learnt quite a lot. As for Mongodb I had never heard of it until this week but feel like it can be a very useful tool especially with data where length or type cannot be predetermined, such as product description.

We also found out where we will potentially be getting deployed after eight more weeks of training. Our group was told we will be deployed to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), although not sure exactly what project/projects we will be working on, we were given a rough idea of what sort of things we will be doing there, databases, big data and maybe some devops. This group was then further split into people joining the Southampton team of  ONS and the Wales (Newport) team. I am  part of the Wales team, which has around 14 odd people, were already talking about renting a house together so the next two years should be fun! Although we have been told not to put deposits down yet because it might change, I hope not though I'm pretty pleased with this outcome better Wales than London.

Week 7

Much needed three day weekend although it turned out to be a very eventful bank holiday. Ended up missing my coach back too so got back to Manchester at two on Tuesday morning after six hours of traveling. On week five already! Weeks are flying by, not long left till I'll be in a proper work life routine in wales.

This week is all about creating the Accounts and Sales Analytics System. The System is being made using Python 3, which I have never used before and the syntax took some time to get used to. We were given multiple user scenarios which were used to add functionalities to our system. The user stories showed a lot of missing data from the databases both the SQL and Mongodb so a lot of this week was spent going back and editing the databases created the first week. I also got to experience how different it is to call queries between SQL and Mongodb, I prefer SQL querying a lot more. I still managed to get a lot of the functionalities to work with both the SQL and Mongodb data being presented. But I had much more fun making the battleship game in Java from week three.

Weeks 4 and 5 At QA Academy

Week 4

A month of training is nearly over! First thing Monday the group of 40 got split up into two groups, our group was going through databases for this week. We were given the task of creating the databases for NB Garden's new Inventory & Sales Management System using both MYSQL (in workbench) and Mongodb (NOSQL). I had little experience with SQL as I used it in my final year project but never had any proper training with databases so this week was very helpful, and learnt quite a lot. As for Mongodb I had never heard of it until this week but feel like it can be a very useful tool especially with data where length or type cannot be predetermined, such as product description.

We also found out where we will potentially be getting deployed after eight more weeks of training. Our group was told we will be deployed to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), although not sure exactly what project/projects we will be working on, we were given a rough idea of what sort of things we will be doing there, databases, big data and maybe some devops. This group was then further split into people joining the Southampton team of  ONS and the Wales (Newport) team. I am  part of the Wales team, which has around 14 odd people, were already talking about renting a house together so the next two years should be fun! Although we have been told not to put deposits down yet because it might change, I hope not though I'm pretty pleased with this outcome better Wales than London.

Week 5

Much needed three day weekend although it turned out to be a very eventful bank holiday. Ended up missing my coach back too so got back to Manchester at two on Tuesday morning after six hours of traveling. On week five already! Weeks are flying by, not long left till I'll be in a proper work life routine in wales.

This week is all about creating the Accounts and Sales Analytics System. The System is being made using Python 3, which I have never used before and the syntax took some time to get used to. We were given multiple user scenarios which were used to add functionalities to our system. The user stories showed a lot of missing data from the databases both the SQL and Mongodb so a lot of this week was spent going back and editing the databases created the first week. I also got to experience how different it is to call queries between SQL and Mongodb, I prefer SQL querying a lot more. I still managed to get a lot of the functionalities to work with both the SQL and Mongodb data being presented. But I had much more fun making the battleship game in Java from week three.

Weeks 2 and 3 At QA Academy

Week 2
The first week flew by, if only weekends were 4 days instead of two, feels like I had no rest traveling home and back but worth it for some real home food! Week two started with a scrum, PEAKAT has slowly adopted the planking scrum so they hardly last more than three minutes. PEAKAT also saw an addition of two new people, who we had to get up to date with the project. The newbies brought our class count to around 40 people, again feels a lot like being at uni.

Friday was probably a student's worst nightmare, work hand-ins, a test and to top is all off a presentation too! but at the end of the day it really was not as bad as I thought, the presentation went well (except the grilling at the end) and the test seemed quite simple. Look forward to the feedback on Monday.


Week 3
Week 3 started with the news of casual month for charity, I thought what we wore was casual as it is but I'm not complaining, if only I bought more t-shirts and shorts from back home! The presentation feed back was very helpful and got some good ideas to help make our presentation more interactive but still stay professional. Got 69.7% on the EA test which was average but happy with that considering it was basically a university module crammed into two weeks with all the socialising and hardly any revision time.

Week 3 also had the welcome party! It was mid week but free drinks are welcome any day of the week. The welcome party was a blast but was surprised how long the two grand tab lasted considering how many of us were there (118 apparently) and how much us QA employees like drinking. The welcome party ended with a nice 'dine in' session with the PEAKAT group, a much needed meal to end the day.

Thursday, the dreaded forty odd back to back presentations of different design patterns! Was not looking forward to that with a mild hangover, we managed to get through them within three hours probably the worst three hour experience at QA to date. But other than that week three was great finally got to practice some java which was surprisingly easy to get used to, probably because I have c++ experience. We were given the task to make the battleship game which we worked on all week with a code review at the end of the week with the trainers.

First Week At QA Academy

 

After a hectic week of finding a place to stay in Salford and one last five hour coach journey from Leicester, my home town, I had officially moved into my temporary home and ready for my first day at QA academy.

The thought of my first day in a “real life” office was daunting, as I slowly made my way up five flight of stairs. As soon as I entered the office I saw a few familiar faces from the assessment day which put me at ease. After meeting a few more people we were taken into our “classroom”, where after a brief introduction we got straight into the training course starting with a lecture on ‘Enterprise Architecture’. We were put into groups and were given the task to come up with a team name, we went for “PEAKAT” which was basically the first letter of all our names put together (very creative, I know). My thoughts after the end of the first day as a QA Trainee was, “this feels like being at first year of uni all over again”, and that was great! PEAKAT then decided to meet up and have dinner at the Dockyard to end the day (PS the Mexican bean burger may taste nice but a cheeky nandos is still my favourite).

On the second and third day of training we were introduced to a fictional company that required consultancy services from us. I really like the way QA academy have structured their training to incorporate the theoretical knowledge of Enterprise Architecture as well as allowing the trainees to get first hand experience in the tasks involved when providing consultancy services. I personally prefer developing software over the business interactions but this process has already taught me a lot about Enterprise Architecture.

Thursday was full of interviews, where I ended up picking the worst two people to interview, Kitty the flirty intern and Chris the angry team manager. It was a weird but an entertaining experience, feel sorry for Elliot who was role playing Kitty’s part. After work a few trainees decided to go to the depot climbing centre, where I found out i’m naturally talented at rock climbing.

Thank god it’s Friday! A day full of just catching up on work and moaning about how tiring working 9-5 everyday is, especially when you’re used to waking up at 12pm instead of 7am. I feel like writing a blog without any reference to pool would be a crime. To be completely honest I am probably the worst pool player from the group but still managed to win three out of the four games i’ve played, got to love flukes!

This week was full of lots of new experiences and I have learnt a lot about myself, one being my blogging skills are terrible and I look forward to other adventures QA academy brings. :D