Release Analyst Review

I work within the Release and Environments Team on a project called Boost. Boost is a suite of applications which are used to onboard a number of different clients to Barclays. Most of my days are taken up on Change Management and Incident Management. Releasing updates to the various test sites and liasing with the development teams. Speaking to users and investigating the logs for any issues.

Change and Incident Management. Agile Development. The team I am in releases updates every Thursday in a fast paced agile development method. Checking Logs to identify errors and find the root cause of these issues. Script writing to automate the log retrieval process. Writing database queries to check live data issues.

At first I did not enjoy my apprenticeship and I found it very unorganised and the company did not know what to expect from an apprentice. But as time has gone on and with regular contacts with the apprentice hr team it has got better and as i find myself more useful to the team I do enjoy it more.

I was part of the first group of apprentices at Barclays in Glasgow so there was a lot of teething issues to begin with. Lack of communication with the University is still an issues. Are roles were picked for us with no option to rotation. It took a lot of meetings with management and university before they became close to agreeing to similar ideas. The apprenticeship at Barclays is still evolving and I have two years left on my course to run.

At the beginning support was lacking, my role in Barclays was not planned and my development process was hindered. It wasn't until four months in that I was given a job role in the team with daily work. Again HR and Management didn't really communicate effectively. But since then with my new manager it has got better.

I would say minimal support. We are in University 1 day a week and it is hard to cram all the learning we require in. Being in a class with different companies we are all progressing at different rates. Our course leader is very ineffective in communicating and announcements are usually provided last minute.

I have used very little knowledge from university in work and they don't synchronize that well. This is also a problem with what Barclays expect from an apprentice and what the University expects. It took over a year for the two to communicate effectively and improvements are only really made for the year following us.

Barclays do have a lot of events organised and everyone is usually sent the invite on a first come first served basis. Individuals also organize different events for people to join. But due to work and studying i usually prefer to take a break away from work and go home .

No

I just feel that we have been the test dummies for this apprenticeship and my honest to opinion to someone would be know. In an ideal world I feel like we should be compensated for having to go through a lot of their trial and error situation to make it better for the years below.

Just be yourself and be honest. Apply because you are interested in the field or company. Or like the sound of working and studying despite social life being brought down to a minimum. Never be afraid to disagree with something and come up with better ideas to improve the situation.