Welcome to Automation Institute's Pro of the Month series, where we showcase a dedicated learner on Automation Institute, award them an exclusive badge, and ask them a bit about their automation journey.
The selection criteria are:
- Being active on Automation Institute in the given month
- Having the most courses completed in the given month
- Other usage considerations
Iโm excited to announce that the winner of the October Automation Institute Pro of the Month award is:
- Terence McDevitt - Solution Architect @ Argon Digital
Terence shared some insights from his automation journey:
How did learning about automation impact your professional career/goals/aspirations?
Automation is a key tenet in nearly every software solution we design and build at ArgonDigital. We've been doing it for years and it's just engrained in our heads at this point. Modern iPaaS platforms like Workato have really helped shift our mindset on automation as we can now focus less on the actual building of automations and more on their design - efficiently modeling business processes instead of worrying about the gory details of connecting disparate systems. At this point in my career, I want to make the most out of my time and my clients' budgets so the quicker we can incorporate automation, the better.
What was your favorite course you took from the Automation Institute? Why?
As lame as it might sound, my favorite course was "Error Troubleshooting" because so many people tend to get caught up on the "happy path" when designing software and they get themselves in a jam when they encounter exceptions. Knowing that Workato has an entire framework dedicated to handling exceptions just means that we don't need to figure out how to do this on our own. Sure, there's still plenty of work to be done in terms of handling things correctly but having a solid starting point like Workato has provided is a huge help.
What is the one thing you're most proud of when it comes to implementing automation?
There can be quite a bit of up-front work required to make the case for automation - i.e. what's the initial investment? What will a client get in return? Will it put anyone out of a job (hopefully not)? etc. Launching automation solutions into a live environment and seeing how it can truly transform a business resulting in stakeholders and users being bought into it can be incredibly rewarding.
What advice would you give to others considering a career in automation?
Just because automation is available doesn't mean you always need to use it. There's a time and place for it and being able to understand where that line is takes time. Some things are incredibly well-suited for automation. Other things actually do need human involvement. You can't (and shouldn't) automate everything - particularly processes that are already known to be bad. Improve the "design" of processes first before attempting to automate them.
Congrats to Terence on being our October winner!
If you hope to be featured as the next Automation Institute Pro of the Month, continue learning and getting certified via Automation Institute and keep your eye out for an email around the beginning of the month.
