This summer of 2020 I had the opportunity to take part in a remote internship program with CGI Federal. CGI is an IT consulting company and the federal side focuses on working with government organizations. During this internship, I have gathered an incredible amount of not only technical knowledge but also knowledge about the industry. I tackled three major projects. The first project was to automate testing for a team working with a regulatory agency. My second project was to work with three other interns on a capstone project, which was a mock business proposal to the Veteran's Affairs. Lastly, I worked in a team of 10 fellow interns on a Corporate Social Responsibility project. All three of these projects gave me insight into different aspects of what it is like to work for CGI.
I was put on a team with great members with whom I kept constant communication throughout the project. I was tasked with researching a method on how to integrate Selenium IDE tests with Bamboo CI and subsequently implement my solution. This was a challenge mainly due to the fact that I was completely unfamiliar with the Selenium suite and the Atlassian suite. In the following three weeks I became knowledgable on Selenium IDE and Webdriver, Bamboo CI, Confluence, and some JIRA. After I had gathered enough information, I began taking gradual steps towards my final goal. At the end of my internship, I was able to present to my team my findings and give detailed instructions on how to integrate Selenium IDE tests to work with Bamboo CI. I also gave information on the next steps to further improve the development process. Throughout the project, I learned about Selenium, Atlassian, some AWS, and about the testing of web applications.
My capstone project was focused on showing us interns the consultant part of working with CGI. We were tasked with proposing to the Veteran's Affairs why advanced analytics is something they should implement into their system. Our team decided that we should focus on using advanced analytics to predict influxes in veteran patients. With a system like that, appointments could be scheduled more manageably and workforce forecasting could be used to schedule more staff during peak working times. Additionally, a physical assets management system could be used to ensure there are no shortages of medical equipment. We had found tools that could facilitate all these needs and could function together as well as with the system that the Veteran's Affair already had in place. Finally, we made a twenty-minute mock presentation that we then presented to CGI members who gave us positive and valuable feedback.
For my final project, I was tasked with joining a team of interns and organizing a charitable event. My team had decided we will work with Breakthrough, an organization that increases educational opportunities for lower-income students by aiding both the students and teachers. We had decided to show these kids why an interest in technology could lead to a fulfilling career path. This was all done remotely through Zoom. I created a presentation with two other members of the team that discussed what it means to work in tech, some examples of cool tech you could be a part of, and our feelings about the career path. After the presentation, we divided up into breakout rooms where two members would talk to about fifteen students about questions they had and further resources they could look into to jump-start their tech career.
Copyright © 2020 Mikolas Slama