In this interview, we talk further with intern Jari. Jari is 26 years old and is completing his master’s degree in Business Informatics at Utrecht University. He is currently writing his thesis at BPM Company. Want to know more about his thesis research? Then read part 1 of the interview here!
What does an average day as a research intern look like?
”As a research intern, days look pretty variable for me. This is also mainly due to the phase you are in. First of all, you are still very much looking to define your subject. Then many meetings take place with both my supervisor from the university and the one from BPM Company. That way, you try to exchange ideas so that together you can come up with a cool topic that is interesting for all parties.
So one day you are in the office working and the next day I am at the university working on my research. It is nice to occasionally meet up with a group of friends at university to exchange ideas and tricky issues with each other.
Now my mostly theoretical side of the track is over and I plan to observe how they proceed from three different cases. The purpose of this is to further validate my model and eventually develop a method that can be applied within the company. The combination of the theoretical framework and best practices that (hopefully) emerge from the cases should be able to come up with a nice usable method!”
How do you experience the guidance during your assignment?
”The supervision is top notch! I have Bram as my tutor and he sends regular messages on how things are going. Furthermore, I can always go to him whenever I have questions about either the topic, or for possible leads in terms of people who would be useful to engage in conversation with. I am also happy with the feedback he gives on my papers that I submit, making it a nice and transparent process. Apart from Bram, I can contact anyone. Even with the scheduling of interviews, I notice that everyone is enthusiastic to be able to work on it, which makes it very nice.”
What do you like most about your graduation project?
”The best thing about my assignment is that I can actually observe the cases to find out how the development processes really work. Now that the theoretical part is behind me and I have a conceptual model, it does give me a boost to hopefully make it usable in practice. So I’m very curious!”
What have you learned most during your graduate internship at BPM Company so far?
”So far, I have learnt the most from talking to colleagues about their experiences with clients. This is immensely valuable to hear. There is so much human knowledge involved in developing software for companies. This makes you realise that soft-skills are actually even more important than meets the eye. Many customers have no idea what they actually want and how they want it implemented. So it is a difficult task to be able to translate those customer wishes properly. I think that’s pretty cool!”
Do you want to graduate from BPM Company just like Jari? What are you waiting for? Join the club! We are always looking for new and ambitious interns.
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