Newfire Career Journey: From BA to Chapter Lead

Over my eight year career as a Business Analyst, I’ve been consistently inspired by my profession, shifting between various domains and projects. When I decided to join Newfire almost 2 years ago, I was one of the first employees in the newly opened office in Zagreb, Croatia. What I saw here was a great professional opportunity within an international team with lots of room to grow. And my perception was right. Not only was I able to grow as a BA, I also took on the role of global BA Chapter Lead, expanded my skills, and got a “second wind” to my career.

An Exciting Start

From the beginning of the onboarding process, I got to dig deep into day-to-day operations, learn about new projects, and even help establish new processes. As time went on, our Croatian team grew by 6x in just over a year (with plans to double that by end of 2022!). When I joined NF, I learned about opportunities in healthcare and other industries that were impactful and interesting to me. What most attracted me to NF was the ability to grow individually and as a company.

I’ve been excited to be part of our work-smart/play-better BA community here at Newfire. As a team, we bring our knowledge and perspectives from various projects across the organization to enrich our structure. Using Scrum and Agile principles, our team works hard to improve business processes. Our clients require high quality control and quality developed protocols because the healthcare industry is life-critical. For that reason, it’s critical for us to find the balance between administrative processes and the freedom to organize ourselves for precise research and effective work. We appreciate each other’s cultural differences and even enjoy spending time together in person to align both our personal and professional approaches.

New Role, New Growth

After working as a BA for the first six months, I began to take on Chapter Lead responsibilities. As Chapter Lead for a young team, my mission was to create reliable coaching and mentorship resources. The team trusted in my experience and I used this opportunity to master both my technical skills and my soft skills.

Working in Chapter Leadership, I still functioned as a BA but expanded my responsibilities to include mentoring/teaching fellow team members and strengthening my leadership skills. It’s been an excellent opportunity to test myself across various challenges and I began practicing many new types of analysis across projects and domains.

Over time as a BA, I have witnessed many changes in technologies. I view my role as bridging the gap between a product’s current status and where it needs to go. My responsibilities include organizing our team members to work efficiently, getting to know the product we’re working to continually improve, understanding the client’s needs, proposing solutions, writing user stories, and making sure our client’s requirements are met by sourcing the right engineers to create a great product. I also do the appropriate research to be sure that we’re capitalizing on the most up-to-date tools. For instance, the tools I could apply two years ago are no longer applicable today. These days, many new tools require configuration so it’s critical for me to keep learning and stay current on how to use them. Having an automated process allows me to focus on eliminating issues that come up, leaving me ready to go for more when I see room for improvement.

Professional Development Through Newfire’s Rotation Program

Before arriving at Newfire, I gained BA experience across industries and projects like life sciences and governmental internal affairs. Once I took the job at Newfire, I continued to work across various domains.

After being at Newfire for eight months, I was offered a spot in our Rotation Program, an opportunity for team members to work in a different domain or on a different project to gain new skills and experiences within the company. Through my time in rotation, I uncovered a passion for healthcare projects, particularly because I knew my work had a direct impact on people’s quality of life.

Working with a team of international specialists with rich, unique backgrounds and gaining access to a new industry with ground-breaking initiatives offered me an immense opportunity for learning. I’m thankful to work for a company that values such personal and professional growth.

The Benefits of Career Coaching

Career coaching and mentorship programs allow Newfire to hire less experienced specialists to help them learn more complicated business development processes earlier in their careers. I enjoy working with these junior specialists, sharing the tips and techniques we use in our day-to-day business analysis practice. Enabling BA training within our mentorship and coaching programs help support their career growth while remaining aligned with a team. Participants are offered a clear plan for goals to be accomplished, career development, and opportunity to enhance their skills in other fields like software development.

Benefits, Team Work, and Work-Life Balance

Although our teams work across different time zones, the team cooperation is extraordinary. There are also endless new opportunities for growth, flexible working hours, opportunities to work in different domains, communication with offices across the globe, and bonus programs. Additionally, the friendly attitude and support from colleagues in Costa Rica, Croatia, Malaysia, the US, and Ukraine are “softer” benefits that are hard to overestimate.

Newfire is young and resilient and all team members get involved in new processes. The BA community’s main goal is to create an understandable structure and to take each challenge step-by-step. As a global company, our team members organize workshops to support each other and their projects, which helps to brainstorm new, different ideas and fill knowledge gaps.

Continuing to Find Room for Improvement

Newfire is an excellent place for BA specialists of any level because there are so many opportunities for continued growth. As a senior BA and Chapter Lead myself, I know that even when I reach a desired goal, there’s no “end.”

Opportunities for development abound here at Newfire. We highly value transparent communication, where everyone can talk directly to their supervisors.