It turns out that experience in the technology industry is quite effective for volunteering. Some approaches to completing tasks perfectly complement and improve results in each of these areas. But how to achieve a win-win effect when you constantly volunteer and work in IT?
It turns out that experience in the technology industry is quite effective for volunteering. Some approaches to completing tasks perfectly complement and improve results in each of these areas. But how to achieve a win-win effect when you constantly volunteer and work in IT?
Experts from the NIX IT team — Python Team Lead Oleksiy Novikov and Head of CMS Department Yevhen Kotelnytskyi — share their advice.
Like thousands of Ukrainian IT workers, the team helps the Armed Forces of Ukraine in various ways: they conduct training, search, purchase and deliver necessary equipment, ammunition, and vehicles to the military. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, NIX has provided the Armed Forces with support in the amount of 1 billion 610 million 390 thousand hryvnias.
The ability to simultaneously manage several projects or perform several tasks can be compared to processing requests from the military. You need to quickly switch between messages and calls and at the same time not to lose context, not to lose focus, control many nuances. It is difficult to keep everything in your head. You can miss an application, lose supplier contacts, forget the date of receipt of the request — there are many risks.
Nix volunteers are saved in such situations by the habit of automating business processes and tracking task completion at each stage. Just as IT projects maintain documentation and monitor various data about system behavior, volunteer tasks can be created in a Google Sheet form, add statuses to each of them, stages of task implementation, set reminders about scheduled events, and automate the generation of reports based on previously entered data.
In the first months of the full-scale war, most volunteers helped the army with whatever they could: everything was lacking and everything was needed as quickly as possible. Over time, «specializations» were built in the NIX volunteer headquarters in accordance with the needs of the front and the volunteers involved. This significantly increased the efficiency and coordination of the provision of assistance.
It seems to be the case in the IT sphere. Beginners usually take on various tasks in order to, on the one hand, practice, and on the other, understand what they are better at, what is more interesting to do, what they want to deepen their knowledge in. For example, someone first processes database queries, then learns to configure APIs, and later integrates a third-party service. Over time, an IT professional will understand what they like and what works, and immerse themselves in individual technologies and frameworks. Ultimately, this is more efficient both in terms of time and for further professional development.
In the NIX volunteer headquarters, everyone chose a direction that was interesting to them and continues to help the army to this day. For example, those who are interested in technology and modern gadgets are engaged in walkie-talkies. By focusing on one topic, the volunteers were able to better explore all the nuances of the equipment, tactics of use and encryption features, and this allows them to find quality products from trusted suppliers.
Another common task for IT specialists. You get a general description, for example, what the customer expects from the new functionality, and then you think about what information you lack to implement the plan and who you can ask for details. Sometimes IT specialists joke: you need to improve your skills in reading customers' minds in order to implement exactly what they want.
You can approach the requirements formally, or you can immerse yourself in the customer’s business, see real problems and needs, and offer an appropriate solution. This is where the ability to work with people’s expectations, correctly interpret their words, and ask the right questions comes in handy. This is also true for volunteers.
Understanding what a soldier really needs literally «in words», based on generalized explanations — this is often faced by those who help the military.
From NIX’s experience, during the search for a drone, it turned out that you can buy a Mavic for half the price, but without a remote control. It would seem that the kit is incomplete, there is no point in spending money on it. However, the front-line realities are such that the military often lose this «carcass», but the remote control remains. So why not use it with a new drone? The soldiers liked the idea, so after receiving the «approval» from the brigade, the volunteer purchased the equipment separately and later transferred it to the military. This approach allowed us to purchase twice as many drones, and all because the focus in the task shifted from a formal request to finding real benefits for the customer.
The development of programs, web and mobile applications is impossible without constant communication both within the performers, that is, the technical team, and with the involvement of the client. Here it is worth highlighting two special manifestations. The first is regular and timely reporting on the progress of work and previous results. This allows everyone to be on the same page and, if necessary, quickly resolve difficulties or offer a new, more effective solution in a timely manner.
This is also important in volunteering. You should inform the fighters about the status of their application, provide guidance on the delivery times for the gadget, equipment, car, or other item, and explain what resources you need, which affects the successful completion of the request. Sometimes, for objective reasons, it is not possible to quickly collect donations or deliver the goods within the expected period. Delay can be very expensive.
The second «IT» element of communication is feedback. Whether it’s development from scratch or the implementation of functionality in a finished product, everything comes from the client’s business tasks and the needs of end users. Therefore, the habit of regularly reporting on the work done yourself and collecting feedback from other team members allows you to improve future development. If compared to volunteer activities, it is useful to collect feedback from departments about the transferred equipment: how did this or that thing work in reality? This will help to assess the effectiveness of the purchase and make sure of its feasibility in case of similar requests. And feedback is the basis of communication with benefactors. Agree, each of us is pleased to see the results of our donations.
Volunteers sometimes have to do things they have never encountered before. For example, to purchase FPV drones, they need to understand radio frequencies. Google it, ask military or other experienced volunteers, find specialized experts in this area — any method will do. Yes, by delving into something new over and over again, you will gradually stop being afraid of unfamiliar, complex topics, and maybe you yourself will become an expert for someone. It sounds similar to working in IT, right? You can always figure out everything, the main thing is to have the desire.
In IT, a lot depends on communication: with colleagues, clients, developers and managers on the customer’s side. You are all from the same circle to some extent, you may have common experience, understanding of business domains and how certain technical processes work. In volunteering, everything is different — the community unites people from completely different fields. In addition to IT people, someone in the volunteer team may be from the agricultural sector, someone from finance, and some even came from the civil service. People of different ages, with different professional and life experience. Of course, in helping the military this does not matter, because you have a common goal, and this is a plus for effective communication and cooperation.
What can you learn from working in IT? Gain more confidence: you now have the courage to get along with anyone, no matter what difficulties arise in your work. Having volunteer experience behind you, you get along better with people, you find common ground faster. This can be useful, for example, in training switchers who come to IT from another industry or after demobilization.
IT specialists often deal with different businesses that differ not only in geography, but also in terms of users, which have radically different behavioral patterns from ours, and other cultural features. This can be traced at the stage of getting to know the customer. Therefore, here too, the ability to find a common language with everyone adds confidence and in communication with clients allows you to bring cooperation to a qualitatively new level.
The peculiarity of any resources (financial, time, human) is that they are, unfortunately, exhaustible. No matter how much you want to help everyone at once, in order to remain effective as a volunteer, you will have to choose: to go in one volunteer direction or to continue to lead several «projects», not to rush into buying expensive equipment that the military themselves found, and to independently look for an affordable and equally high-quality option, or still take into account the urgency of the request. Feeling that at one point or another it is better to do something, to determine priorities and act according to a plan — everyone eventually comes to this, even in the most chaotic volunteering.
In IT, this skill allows you to understand where to focus your efforts here and now for a good result (because why would we need another one?). For example, which tasks are «burning» and require urgent solutions, and which ones can be sent to technical debt with a clear conscience and completed at a leisurely pace. Similar experience from volunteering in IT work simplifies the analysis of needs, and therefore, you will be able to approach the choice of task priorities in a balanced way.
This applies to any job, but if you compare IT and volunteering, there are differences. As an IT professional, you are responsible for completing tasks on time, for providing quality services that meet the client’s expectations. If you are a project manager, then you are also responsible for your team.
Volunteering is not without its challenges, but the level of responsibility is higher here. Let’s be honest: the cost of making wrong decisions in software development is not comparable to choosing a conventional helmet for the military. Your decisions and the speed of assistance can indirectly affect the performance of some military tasks. Therefore, it is important to carefully check everything: the characteristics and quality of equipment, the reliability of suppliers and carriers, monitor the deadlines for closing requests, record the smallest «bugs» in processes and be able to quickly fix them. This is continuous, intensive work, and how else can it be when it comes to helping the military.
After all, volunteering practice teaches you to calmly perceive any work difficulties, from civilian life, and calmly cope with them. The main thing is to see the goal and understand why you are taking a specific step. If you have had experience with such responsibility as volunteers, then you will certainly cope with both IT project management and management of your own team.
Of course, if volunteering teaches something, it does not mean that a person did not know how to do it before. However, volunteering can significantly strengthen professional skills, and vice versa: purely IT approaches to performing certain tasks come in handy for volunteers. It is an interconnected process, where one improves the other.
