February 3, 2021 9:50 PM
This is what I love about my job
On Monday, I had an issue that I needed to investigate. I work on property tax software, and our client had asked why there was a pending refund on a bill from years ago. The business analysts (BAs) that looked into this weren't able to make sense of the numbers, so they asked for a developer's help.
So I'm asking the BAs questions on things that I definitely should have learned in my property tax training two years ago. I'm scribbling tax amounts in my notebook and doing math and getting confused because none of the numbers I'm getting match what our tax software was generating. There are taxes and fees and penalties and they weren't adding up. But I'd ask another clarifying question. And I'd redo my math. And I kept doing that, until it all clicked.
I explain it to the BA, and everything finally makes sense to him too. He in turn explains it to the client.
Client: Thank you for the detailed explanation, [BusinessAnalyst]! I will go ahead and approve the refunds to be processed now that we have a better understanding of why they were generated and how it was calculated. Really appreciate it!
Business Analyst: Thanks again on this one Kirsten. The county appreciated the detailed explanation (which I adapted from what you provided)
There's just something really satisfying about taking something complicated and confusing, making sense of it, explaining it to someone else, and seeing it all click in their head too.