At EPAM Colombia, Community Creates Adaptability that leads to Business Analysis Excellence

At EPAM Colombia, Community Creates Adaptability that leads to Business Analysis Excellence

Melisa Rua, Business Analyst, and Jhon Gutierrez, Senior Business Analyst, are part of our team at EPAM Colombia.  Both are leading the way for the Business Analysis community in LATAM, yet their paths to these positions could not be more different. However, the lessons they’ve learned along their career journeys are strikingly similar. Both understand the value of adapting to better meet client needs. The best way to achieve this evolution is by building a community of talented individuals. Through collaboration, these teams don’t just solve problems — they redefine solutions. 

Melisa’s career started in 2018; since then, she has worked across a variety of industries, from finance to supply chain. This professional journey allowed her to learn from people with all kinds of backgrounds, and to get deeply involved in the world of agile methodologies and other tools that organizations use to align and ensure smooth flow. Now, after three years at EPAM, she’s fully specialized in software development and has learned to navigate the complex technology landscape.

On the other hand, Jhon’s journey quickly grew from telecommunications to tech. He learned the importance of building a diverse set of skills, realizing that if the market keeps changing, one must change too. Now, with more than a decade in the field, he’s done everything from server maintenance to leading teams of engineers. He is a leading voice in the world of business analysis and understands the value of different methodologies, the importance of communication and the need for personal growth. 

Building Spaces for Innovation

While leading EPAM LATAM’s Business Analyst Community is one of the crowning career achievements for both Jhon and Melisa, it was never part of the original plan. It was their drive to try new things that led them to take on challenges when opportunities arose. Both were looking for a place to learn and evolve their skill sets. When the opportunity to lead community events came up, they jumped at it. They discovered that sharing knowledge is an ideal path to career success. 

Creating spaces for discussion and learning, as well as giving talented people a stage to share their expertise, has been a core part of Latin America’s Business Analyst Community.

The first challenge was completely personal. Melisa and Jhon described themselves as introverts who had never really been on stage or had the experience to be catalysts for building a successful community through networking. Yet it was their relentless drive to grow, learn, and make meaningful contributions in the tech scene, as well as the support of their team members (and the people who would eventually become members of their community), that gave them the motivation to create this space and help others. 

Business Analysis is a broad term that brings together experts in Python, Power BI, project management, Scrum, and other disciplines. And in order for the community to succeed, and to drive innovation forward, Melisa and Jhon knew that they needed to create a space where people from all these fields could talk to one another and learn from each other, helping them view their businesses from a different angle and achieve a new level of understanding of their everyday work, one that was cohesive and integrated all different perspectives and disciplines into something truly impactful. 

The community is a space where professionals can view things from different angles. And it was this expansion of ideas that created value for the community and fostered its members' creativity.

The Only Certainty is Change

Adaptability is critical to success in tech. There’s always new technology on the market, and clients' needs are constantly changing. The best professionals in the field know when to change and when to stay the course. In fact, Melisa and Jhon’s team agrees that for someone in business analysis, this quality is as important as breathing. 

Knowing when to transform and how to communicate the importance of these processes to people across the business is key to ensuring the best outcomes for an organization.

However, you can only go so far on an individual level. To truly become a professional who adapts quickly to change, you need the support of a talented team of people. 

Particularly at a company like EPAM, where you work with clients of all sizes across multiple industries, it’s important to have teams that complement each other. Cross-disciplinary learning and cross-functional communication are the foundations of an adaptable organization. 

Finding True Agility 

Project Management and Agile methodologies have been integral to Jhon and Melisa’s careers. Their work with Scrum and other tools perfectly sums up their philosophy and their constant quest to become more adaptable and efficient. 

While they both arrived at the same place, they got there through completely different career paths. Melisa worked primarily with waterfall methodologies, and EPAM gave her the opportunity to level up her skills, earning her certification as a Business Analyst. While she had a solid theoretical foundation, the real challenge came from adapting those learnings to client needs, timelines and resources. 

Jhon had more experience with Scrum by the time he joined EPAM having worked with companies at every level of maturity with Agile methodologies, which forced him to constantly adapt and change. The biggest rule of an Agile framework is that nothing is set in stone. Flexibility is an essential part of the philosophy for every practitioner of this discipline. 

Now, with the release of the Scrum Expansion Pack, Jhon and Melisa feel validated in their professional mission to promote adaptability and flexibility as essential to the role. The Scrum Expansion Pack is a new set of principles built on these concepts and provides a much-needed foundation and theoretical backing for the values and ideas that have enabled our team to drive multiple successful projects. And if you take a closer look at Scrum Expansion Pack’s website, you’ll see that it is open source and thrives on community collaboration. Which is exactly how Melisa and Jhon have found success in all aspects of their careers. 

Want to join a team that values collaboration and community and cares about your professional development? Visit our careers site at careers.epam.com and find a role that’s right for you.