Thomas Thomas

COMPANY: ITV

JOB TITLE: Business Analyst

I’m currently part of the Business Delivery team within Broadcast technology. The role requires methodical investigation, analysis, review and documentation of all or part of a business in terms of business functions and processes, and the information they use.

In addition it involves the definition of requirements for improving any aspect of processes & systems and the creation of viable specifications in preparation for the construction of information and communication systems.

I also sometimes moonlight as a VB/VBA developer, ProClarity support/trainer (BI tool) and tester for the department.

My developer skills are handy when it comes to understanding issues or projects on a technical level.

RELATED DEGREE:

• MSc Information Technology – Kingston University (Full Scholarship from the ESPRC).
• BEng Manufacturing Systems Engineering – Leeds Met University.

WORK EXPERIENCE:

As part of my MSc I did a project for Carlton Television (London) which involved the analysis and development of a Sales Policy Database for the Advertising Sales business. As a result Carlton TV hired me when I completed my MSc.  From there I survived the Carlton/Granada merger and ended up with a job as a software developer for ITV.

SKILLS REQUIRED:

• The business is not technology oriented; as a result good client liaison and communication skills are required.
• An understanding of the television industry/airtime sales helps.
• As an analyst the ability to ask the right questions is important.
• Ability to grasp high level technical solutions/documents.
• Ability to create readable requirements/functional specifications.
• Project and time management skills.
• Ability to write test scripts – System, UAT, Regression etc.
• Experience of any methodologies help e.g. UML, SSADM, BPNM etc.

BENEFITS OF THE JOB:

• A fun place to work: people, surroundings, office, technology.
• Good piece of work is recognised – monthly limelight light award within the department.
• A lot of social events and project successes/launches always celebrated with a party of sorts.
• Time off and hours are reasonably flexible.

CAREER GOALS:

• Seeing as I started of as a developer and am now an analyst, the next step could be project management!? 
• Short term goals: get some large scale projects under my belt in different areas of the business and move towards a senior analyst role.
• Long term goals: stay in media, management in technology.