Tod means Fox

Man I’ve been busy! Not only has my posting been limited in the past 3 weeks, but almost all of my extra-curricular activities have been put on hold as well (it feels like months ago I last played my guitar). There are a few things going on currently. Topmost on the list is the rollout of the first real significant upgrade to our DW/BI Project here at ING. When I mull over the “feature” list, it amazes me how our team of a few developers and analysts (all quant’s), and 2 contractors (an SSIS developer and a QA Manager) got it done. What’s more, it looks like we’ll be right on schedule with the release with a few days to spare. Of course, I hope now I haven’t jinxed us!

I joined this project in mid-stride back in January when I was hired as an external consultant. I was coming over fresh from the United States, to a new and exciting land, Belgium (where the waffles are hot and the chocolate is worth dying for) and a new industry, financials. After a year and a half in healthcare at Cardinal Health, I felt I was ready to enter the financial world — particularly investment management. And so I joined the quant team in the quantitative research department at ING Investment Management.

I was hired as a BI/DW consultant (functioning primarily as an Integration Architect) and was immediately charged with supporting the in-place data integration (ETL) processes for the then un-released DW/BI system. I began my work by documenting (some functional, bust mostly technical) the entire system. In a few weeks I had uncovered many issues and offered a long list of improvements to the team. Many items on my list were directly related to many of the ETL Subsystems that I’ve been discussing. Taking these to heart, we began the long process of refactoring, renaming, and redeveloping some of the processes that were in place. The focus was on future maintainability and performance. I’ve chronicled some of these in a few of my recent posts.

In addition to this, I slowly took over the project management duties and have now been managing the development activities for the entire team. By mid-summer, and due in part to several converging circumstances, I was hired as a full time member of the quant team. Now, my stake in this project’s success is even greater!

I expect to be just as busy over the next two weeks as the final touches are added to this release of the project. I’ve also started to compile a list of “lessons learned”, most of which will be relevant-enough to share with you all. I think that some of these might surprise you!

This week I’ll continue my posts on the ETL Subsystems. I’ll also likely start working on another article for Advisor (topic yet unknown). Lastly, planning for the next release of our DW/BI system is already underway, with development starting as early as November!

PS: If you ever find yourself feeling a bit overwhelmed or too engaged in your work, I highly recommend re-reading Walden (ahh, come on — everyone’s read Walden, right?!?). It has always managed to level me, reminding me how important it is to just sit back and relax once in a while.