MIS Intern
- DecisivEdge is a business and technology consulting firm located in Newark, Delaware. They focus on a few industries including but not limited to financial lending and leasing, healthcare, and manufacturing. The firm is small, 103 employees total, half of which are located in India. My internship provided exposure to a multitude of departments such as Quality Assurance and Functional Delivery.
- As an MIS Intern, my overall role covered four MIS related careers including Project Management, IT Architecture, Quality Assurance, and Business Analysis. It was a 12 week rotational program. Due to the size of the firm, interns are expected to generate value to the projects assigned. I was given work flow diagrams, data flows, requirement collections, a project plan, manual tests, and IT Architecture research. I was also given co-ownership to a volunteer initiative for the company.
- I was mostly focused on one client, and given work based off the need and progression of the client. On the project management side, I created project status updates for both internal and client presentation each week. I designed diagrams based off of requirements collected, created a project plan individually, and researched System Architecture for a solution. I further researched the architecture by creating a small proof of concept and hosting meetings with vendor representatives. On that same client, but separate project, I was assigned an application parity document to identify differences between operating systems. Along that quality assurance route, I was given several test cases to identify defects. I had found production bugs and discrepancies in the test cases the client provided. Finally, I was given a project to co-own. This project was for the community engagement portion of DecisivEdge, in which we hosted a STEM Camp to teach kids about programming. I then presented our efforts to the company at a quarterly all employees company meeting which tested my presentation skills.
- Overall I learned a great deal from the experience at DecisivEdge. Smaller companies expose you to a great deal more and assign you real work to complete which I appreciate. Much of my direct work was presented and talked about to the client, which was a proud moment for me. I discovered how development environments work and how code is brought to production which touched on the programming courses of the MIS Department. Temple taught me how to write code, but DecisivEdge taught me what systems companies put in place to oversee code development (i.e. Jira). Something Temple’s coding courses also didn’t show me was Quality Assurance; DecisivEdge proved how testing is an integral part of the development process. My project management and business analyst courses reflected the work presented to me at DecisivEdge. I furthered that education by learning how to manage a project in an agile progression. It also showed me how to absorb a client meeting on the spot and ask questions at the time of the meeting instead of reworking that meeting. Finally I worked on researching IT Architecture solutions and even created one of these solutions through Azure, something I had already been exposed to in the IT Architecture course at Temple. I had also reached out to Professor Doyle, who had gladly helped guide me through the architecture I was researching.
- DecisivEdge was a fantastic experience, and I believe more students should pursue them to gain real experience in the field. Attached is stories featuring my internship progression and the STEM Camp work I did.
DecisivEdge takes S.T.E.M to School Children At Brandywine School District Camp