A Day in the Life at Continuus: Jillian Burnette, BI Consultant

What is a business intelligence/data science consultant? What does a normal day look like for a data consultant, especially during the work-from-home days we’re currently operating in? Our engineers are here to answer just that with our “A Day in the Life” blog series. Today we’re featuring Jillian Burnette, a Business Intelligence Engineer at Continuus Technologies.

I start off most of my mornings with a nice walk with my dog, Mellie! Fortunately for her, it snowed a lot here in Milwaukee this winter and she LOVES to play in the snow. I live right downtown, so I tend to take our morning walks along the Riverfront. After our walk, I head inside and log on for work.

Now that we are working from home, I have really enjoyed eating my breakfast and loosely planning out my day before my meetings start. I am by no means a fancy day organizer – I just use the Sticky Notes App on my computer for my daily tasks and anything long term goes in my OneNote.

At 9am it is time for my team’s daily sprint call. Each morning, my team at Continuus and our client jump on a call to discuss our daily goals and any roadblocks/challenges we are encountering. This is a nice way to regroup with my team and understand what is on everyone’s plate for the day. Today, I plan to validate our client’s data in Matillion/Snowflake, organize our JIRA board for our Backlog Grooming Session we have scheduled for tomorrow, and spending some time in PowerBI looking through some Google Analytics data.

Shortly after our call, I connect with my Continuus teammate, Lauren Busalacchi on a problem I am having connecting to Google Analytics in Matillion. One of the best parts of working at Continuus, is the collaborative work environment even when working from home. Everyone is always willing to help even if they are not on the same client as you! Sometimes it helps having a fresh set of eyes looking at something.

After we connect, I have the rest of the morning for some data validation. But first! I must get my coffee before I start focusing on my work. I always ensure I have my water bottle filled up, my coffee in hand and a nice playlist to start the day. And of course, Mellie is never too far.

Before I know it, it is time for lunch. I always try to step away for at least 30 minutes. I live in an apartment building with a dog park, so the first half of my lunch break is spent letting Mellie run around with the other dogs in the building. It’s nice to get some fresh air even if the weather is less than ideal. I then head upstairs and have a quick lunch before I get back to work.

I have an internal meeting at 2pm with my Continuus teammates to discuss our project timeline and our goals for the next sprint. I take the time before this meeting to prepare my thoughts and organize the JIRA board. JIRA is a project management software our team uses to track our tasks we need to complete in our two-week sprint. We split out our project into two-week intervals and create overall goals we would like to accomplish. This framework allows us to connect more frequently and ensure we are prioritizing our tasks according to the client’s goals of the project.

I spend the rest of the afternoon getting familiar with our client’s Google Analytics data in PowerBI. I want to be sure I can access their data and have a general understanding of their key data points before we start loading this data into our data warehouse in Snowflake!

After a busy day of work, I like to unwind by getting some exercise in and cooking dinner. Cooking has become a newfound love of mine in quarantine, and I love not having any commute time so I am able to spend the extra time cooking up a yummy dinner. Most nights end with some play time with Mellie and an episode or two of whatever I am watching for that week! I must admit, cooking AND binging a new TV series has been my go-to during these crazy times.

One of my favorite parts about working for Continuus in a consulting role is that no two days are the same. Today I was slim on meetings and I worked heavily validating data but tomorrow could bring a morning blocked full of meetings and some visualization creation! I have found predictability in my general routine but love the ability to work on a variety of different tasks day to day.