What I “Do”

21. Jun, 2010 View Comments

I find that one of the most difficult questions asked of me is something that most people can spew out without giving much thought. However, when I’m am asked, I stammer, stumble and grasp to explain exactly what it is that I do in my work. It’s not because it’s difficult work, mind you…it’s just that my work is very “behind the scenes” and not exactly well-known or comprehensive unless one is in the same field.

As far as titles are concerned, I work as a Senior Application Developer for a major home builder based out of California. However, to say that I am simply a computer programmer is nowhere close to what I really do in my day-to-day. I don’t slap together screens or web forms that people interact with and that makes it almost impossible to really demonstrate the kind of work that I do.

My entire career in the Information Technology field has been a bit mysterious when it came to networking with other IT folks as I started out as a lowly technical support guy. I moved up to System Analyst and over the course of the career, I did Database Administration and finally, Data Integration and Application Development. (Boring, eh? Yeah…that’s why I blog, it’s more in line with my passion.)

What I Do (Day-to-Day for Benefits and a *cough*, Paycheck
The main aspect of what work I perform is based on providing a hidden communication link between different applications and systems across the organization.

Example:
While working for a home builder, the business has several major areas of focus during the build process including land acquisition, community management, sales, construction and warranty. Every business process has its own application that manages the details of the overall process and in order to keep everything in line, these applications need to be aware of one another, but not connected. In other words, the data needs to be shared between those apps, but the actual code structure of those applications should not rely on one another.

My work is focused on making these applications talk to each other in such a way where the data generated within them are consumable and in line across every application; this ensures that all processes are working with the same data and everything is kept in sync without worry of one process using old or invalid data compared to the others.

As a quick walk-through, here is a typical scenario that my work manages several hundred times per day:

New Home Purchased – Contract is signed and the ball is put into motion as a new purchase.
Contract Processed – Customer and home configuration/options broadcaster to downstream.
Data Massage – Original contract data format altered to support other applications that need it.
Target Downstream – Notify and process newly formatted data to downstream applications.
Handle Errors – Ensure downstream applications consume data without error.

That’s about it, all downstream applications are now in line with original contract, so if somebody in the Construction department needs to know about the new builds stating up for a given day, their specific application has all of the needed information in order to start scheduling the construction and get the ball rolling.

What Else I Do (The Blogging Side of the World)
One of my passions in life has always been writing and when I heard about the whole idea of blogging, it was a perfect fit for me. After several other attempts at blogging about topics that affect my life on a daily basis, most of them fizzled and I tried to find that one special topic that truly resonated with who I am and what I enjoy.

I decided to not only write here on Rich Wallace dot net, but I also author and manage a blog that ties in both the positive experiences of my career and my desire for blogging. Hence, I started up a very narrowed niche blog that offers me the best of both worlds:

BizTalkBlogger.com: As a BizTalk Developer and blogger, I melded both worlds together and started up BizTalk Blogger dot com. Based on what I’ve learned from the professional blogging community and my own experiences with past blogs I’ve written, readers will get a taste of not only a technical read on the subject matter, but will find themselves surrounded with the familiar environment of a passion blogger, such as myself.

Clear as mud? Yeah, pretty confusing to me too some mornings.

I have different plans and ideas per blog, but those plans should be falling into place soon so we’ll see how things go. Anyrate, this is “what I do” for work, sure there’s more to me than this, but it covers the professional aspect of life.