BI&A Summer Interns Gain Relevant Skills and Experience for Their Courses and Careers

At BI&A, we offer a robust summer internship program that provides undergraduate and graduate students in the Computer Science and Engineering fields with a challenging experience that pushes them beyond their comfort zone and broadens their knowledge. Each year our interns develop software that contributes to current business within the organization following agile scrum methodologies. Functioning as a real-world software team complete with a product owner and scrum master, the interns gain relevant, well-rounded experience for their careers.

This year, the objective of the interns’ project was to create a Python service that takes text-based input and provides a list of recommended tags back to the caller. Across a series of 8 weekly sprints, the interns went from initial researching of NLP libraries to integrating multiple file uploads and advanced metrics dashboards. The program culminated with a final demonstration led by the interns, attended by management and engineering stakeholders from across the company.

“Some of the most impactful carryovers are the skills I didn’t even realize I’d picked up.” - Brandon Conner, Georgia Institute of Technology

Well into the Fall 2023 semester, the summer interns are already applying new skills they learned through their internship. Summarizing the skills picked up over the summer, Intern Brandon Conner , pursuing a M.S. in Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology shares, “interestingly, some of the most impactful carryovers are the skills I didn’t even realize I picked up. This semester I’m taking a research class where we have access to computer clusters, and I feel much more comfortable working with nix resources through ssh after our use of EC2 I3. In the internship I also learned a lot more about testing frameworks, which has been a huge time saver in my operating systems class since I can incrementally validate code additions. Lastly, I’m looking forward to using agile for large collaborative projects on the horizon after seeing how much it enabled us to accomplish in just 8 weeks.”

“Our mentors did an amazing job of training us and providing support and feedback.” - Nathan Duddles, Georgia Institute of Technology

Operating on one-week sprints enabled the interns to measure their progress and implement continuous improvement in realistic increments across the 8-week program. The interns received an agile overview training during their first week. By the end of the training, the interns were navigating Jira and writing and ranking the user stories for their first sprint. Each week the interns collectively set new goals and took measurable action towards increased efficiency as a team. As Intern Nathan Duddles , pursuing a M.S. in Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology shares, “as I had not used Agile methodology before, I was a bit nervous about working in a team with other interns, but our mentors did an amazing job of training us and providing support and feedback throughout the summer. I also appreciated the diversity of interests and backgrounds among my fellow interns, who also introduced me to new skills, such as wireframing using Balsamiq. I think we were all very pleased with the project that our mentors designed for us and the freedom we had in researching and proposing solutions.”

“Working in an Agile Scrum environment allowed me to gain practical insights…which I've been able to apply directly to school projects” - Frank Deegbe, University of Maryland

In addition to peer collaboration, the interns had access to a variety of technical mentors. They received expert advice with enough guidance to empower them to make educated decisions. Product Owner Brett Buehl provided parameters for the project while enabling the interns to explore the technologies that would best support the outcome given the time restraints. Developers Joel Peebles and Hamza Yaghmmour helped the team overcome technical challenges and gain new insight and expertise through collaborative problem-solving.

Intern Frank Deegbe , pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science at University of Maryland shares, “working in an Agile Scrum environment allowed me to gain practical insights into collaborative software development, which I've been able to apply directly to school projects and clubs. I thoroughly enjoyed working alongside my talented colleagues. Our Scrum Master, Nicole McElroy, was truly amazing, ensuring our team operated efficiently and smoothly during our sprints and retrospective meetings.”

“Being able to apply my skills and learn industry tools…has made me a much stronger student.” - Justine Nguyen, University of Utah

With guidance from these mentors, the interns streamlined their processes with GitLab and created a cohesive product as a team, even completing some of the advanced requirements from the product roadmap including supporting multiple algorithms with customizable algorithm preferences. Intern Justine Nguyen , pursuing a B.S. in Information Systems with a Minor in Business Analytics at the University of Utah shares, “this internship has been a truly fulfilling and?rewarding experience. Prior to the program, I had only been conceptually exposed to a lot of the elements of software engineering. Being able to apply my skills and learn industry tools like Jira and GitLab has made me a much stronger student and allowed me to grow confidence in my career prospects. It was a great learning experience and allowed me to connect with some truly talented peers and mentors who have already helped me grow so much.”

“The intern program at BI&A was a wonderful experience that allowed me to expand my expertise.” - Viral Rathod, University of Massachusetts

As summarized by Intern Viral Rathod , pursuing a B.S. in Computer Science at University of Massachusetts, “the intern program at BI&A was a wonderful experience that allowed me to expand my expertise in the world of software development. The mentorship that was available to us as well as the collaboration with other interns pushed me to grow and learn more than I could?have imagined. I am very grateful for the opportunity and excited to continue my journey in this field.” The collaborative efforts across this team of interns far exceeded expectations. Each intern brought their own diverse skillset and background and contributed their strengths while remaining open to learning new concepts and technologies. The mentors were collectively impressed sprint after sprint with the ways the team came together to solve complex problems and address real business solutions.

We have had interns from past years return for additional internships during their college years and also some have joined us as full-time employees. We look forward to witnessing the career growth and trajectory of these talented individuals. They have set the bar high for future intern teams and demonstrated what can be achieved with a balance of structure and freedom to experiment, mentorship and willingness to learn, and collaborative participation across the team.