Did you know that the United Nations estimated in 2022 that women make up 49.6% of the total population on planet Earth?

And did you know that on February 11, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science is celebrated? And if so, why does this day exist?

I’m going to ask you to think about 3 great scientists in history in 20 seconds… When time passes, you can scroll.

Can I try and guess which scientists did you remember? Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Alan Turing? Perhaps Louis Pasteur or Thomas Edison? Did I get any right?

Or did any of the scientists below pop into your head?

No? If yes, great, because the list goes on! There are many women who have marked the history of Science and Technology. Isn’t this amazing?

However, the world as we know it has found a way to conceal woman’s contribution to the STEM fields throughout history, always putting them to the test and forcing them to challenge social stereotypes. Disclaimer: This article aims to really explore the complexity and progress that has been made so far on gender equality in this field of knowledge. It’s about society itself and not about any specific company.

How did history begin?

We live in days where inclusion is a watchword, however, has it always been like this?

Why is the number of women in STEM lower than the number of men? Is it just because of preferences? The truth is no. Since the beginnings of science, women have always faced many more obstacles to be successful in any career. Social restrictions, lack of access to education and gender discrimination, have always been the main reasons that have prevented women from succeeding in senior positions.

In my opinion, it’s quite curious that we see lots of women working twice as hard to achieve the same as a man, but there’s still the stigma that it’s the woman’s place to take care of the house and the family. There are still many inequalities, especially regarding leadership positions, salary differences and the lack of recognition for academic contributions.

And speaking of numbers and remuneration, we don’t need to go further than 2010 to realise that in Portugal, on average, men received 17.9% more than women for the same roles.The good news is that this value has been decreasing, and now we are talking about 13.1%.

The truth is that it has improved, but does this percentage still makes sense?

My (not that impressive but real) story

Why am I writing this article? First, because I’m a proud woman! Then, because I believe we should all be part of change, and finally because I think we should talk more openly about these subjects so we can have a real vision of things. And of course, I like to think and write about these things!

Looking back, when I was a Cellular and Molecular Biology student, I was always surrounded by girls like me, perhaps in a ratio of 10 boys to 20 girls in the class, which made everything easier. Interestingly, most teachers were male.

When I got out to the business world and started to work, I immediately felted the weight of the sexist country we live in. I was experiencing firsthand the inequality in salary, promotions, consideration, etc. However, the weight of responsibility was always greater!

Only recently, eleven years later, I see that things are starting to evolve, mentalities are starting to change, and there is more and more equity (yes, because equality is not a term that applies).

STEM Women in the IT field

Any quick internet search on this subject returns a simple answer: there are many challenges and there is still a great need to address issues of gender equality. To my view, it’s urgent to acknowledge those issues and take action, as it’s the only way to promote the full potential of diverse talent and foster innovation and progress in STEM areas. To my view, I see it this way:

Underrepresentation: The imbalance is evident from education to leadership positions. There’s a disproportionate lack of female representation, hindering gender equity and diversity in work environments within these domains.

Cultural stereotypes: There is still a strong tendency to think that this area is a masculine area. This stereotype creates a mis concept to young generations who are influenced when choosing this career, and later in the way performance evaluations and promotions are carried out.

Salary differences: Even when occupying similar positions, women generally receive lower salaries than their male counterparts in these working fields. These disparities reflect the ongoing challenges in achieving equitable compensation within these professions.

Work environment: There are still many places where the work environment is not inclusive for women. Gender biases and discriminatory practices are mentally harmful and undermine the realization of a truly diverse and equitable workplace.

Lack of role models: Because there are few women in leadership positions in these areas, it can lead to a lack of desire and aspiration from other women that even might have the potential and aptitude to these kinds of working positions.

How can we make a difference?

There are two fundamental approaches to minimize inequality:

Awareness and education of new generations: The differences observed often begin with education. More training is necessary in order to demonstrate that nowadays, it makes no sense for someone to have different rights due to their gender, after all, the duties and responsibilities are the same.

In schools, it is very important to start creating awareness to these differences from an early age, but also promoting initiatives that encourage everyone to be interested in STEM areas. It is important to demystify these topics and educate the new generations. One way is to transform the education methods more practical, allowing everyone to contact the various areas of science in a dynamic way, for example, in experimental science classes or workshops.

IT companies can also be part of this change by creating academies for everybody, regardless their gender, that has the interest and capability to join. Polarising is doing a great job at this!

Diversity and inclusion initiatives: As adults, we have more difficulty to change our ideas, and sometimes, even accepting difference. We are afraid of what others might think. It is important that more and more organisations are aware of the need of diversity and inclusion. One path may be through implementing policies and programs to promote more equitable work environments. Leadership positions must be occupied by those who prove their worth and trained to manage everyone equally based on performance and delivery, and there should be a “Zero Discrimination Policy” to not use any of the following as evaluation criteria: gender, religion, or origin.

How is it to be a STEM woman at Polarising?

Polarising is doing a great job in diversity and inclusion! Did you know that about 24% of our employees are women? It’s really a good number in this type of companies, since some years ago even 1% was kind of utopic!

The company has a working policy that allows employees to feel safe and at home. Here we have female leaders, but most important, everybody is treated equally. Even regarding salaries, Polarising’s evaluation system values our performance (hard skills and soft skills), and it really doesn’t matter your gender.

That’s why in my brief story I said this was the beginning of a new era: It’s good to finally find a place where my gender (or other personal stuff) doesn’t delay my career.

So… to be or not to be a technological and scientific woman?

Awareness about these topics is growing every day and many efforts are already being done to make the working world, including IT, more inclusive.

There shouldn’t even exist any hesitation in wanting to be what you want to be! Even if the reality still is that there should be more and more possibilities for women to explore their potential.

The path to gender equality in these areas needs continuous efforts, collaboration, and commitment. It is an ongoing challenge that requires companies, teachers, and professionals to be onboard. And from all areas, to ensure that opportunities are equally distributed among everyone.

This article aims to do just that, to encourage reflection on the barriers that exist and inspire actions that lead us towards a future where opportunities are equal for everyone, regardless of gender.

Are we prepared? More than yesterday, less than tomorrow: “The path is made step by step!”

Business Analysts (BAs) often find themselves quietly putting together threads of information, deciphering requirements, and navigating stakeholders’ expectations.

Yet, in the big picture of projects, the critical tasks performed by these analytical minds are sometimes dismissed as mere footnotes or relegated to the background.

So, that Business Analysts are disposable is common knowledge. After all, what is the point of a professional who has the following tasks:

Anyone, in their daily lives, can do this. In fact, does this profession make sense?!

Better yet, there is only one thing worse than a Business Analyst: a Business Analyst who works with Scrum!

And the Agile methodology?

We can describe the agile methodology as a method that is based on two basic principles: iteration and incrementation. It is known for being flexible, adaptive and customer oriented following the Agile Manifesto.

The great advantage is that it does not follow a plan from the beginning to the end of a project. It allows direction changes, more or less pronounced, and it is based on continuous collaboration between multidisciplinary teams.

Theoretically, it is the most effective way to bring a development to life, with the lowest possible risk, as it is based on the following concepts:

Sounds easy, right? But will it be that easy to get the machine rolling?

Get down to it: Agile classification

If I had to organize the five points on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the easiest to put into practice and 5 the most difficult, this would be my rating:

First, the easiest: Scrum

You would expect that the most difficult thing to control would be the daily business, right? After all, Scrum has a series of rules that must be followed, as seen in the image bellow:

In fact, the events and personas that are described in the diagram are relatively easy to implement and serve precisely to assist the daily business.

To manage product development, work is defined in Product Backlog and the magic happens throughout sprints.

As a Business Analyst (with Product Owner functions), I see the four types of events in this work framework as a way of ensuring efficiency, whether in planning (sprint planning), reviewing what was done (sprint review) and even understanding strengths and points of improvement for the team (sprint retrospective).

And honestly, what could be better than a daily meeting for the development team to share what they did, what they are going to do, and existing roadblocks?

When it comes to organization, BAs can boast of being quite efficient. So, just add something almost innate to the advantages of a well-defined method and everything will work. But does the whole team think the same way?

If you want to go deeper into this topic, I invite you to visit the following article and take your own conclusions.

The second step: Multifunctional and self-organizing teams

Creating a multifunctional team that can organize itself on a day-to-day basis can be challenging and may depend on several factors such as company culture, leadership, communication with managers, team size and even the experience of the personas in agile methodologies.

But there is one thing that puts this point, in my opinion, in second place: a clear definition of objectives and tasks for each person.

With this, it is easy to know which task corresponds to whom and allow everyone to manage their time in the most efficient way possible. Furthermore, with effective sprint planning meetings every sprint, if people are responsible, it is safe to expect that there will be self-organization throughout projects.

However, it is up to the BA to ensure that the “machine is running without sand in the gear”: is the board up to date? Are there people who are blocked and afraid to share their problems? Does everyone have access to everything they need to work?

It starts to seem like a BA has a full day after all, doesn’t it?

It starts to get complicated: Incremental delivery

Theoretically, following everything described in the first point, this would be of equal complexity. Will it be?

Let’s imagine a scenario where the customer wants to exchange their OCR reader for a new supplier. So, it is necessary to develop full integration with what already exists. In this project, not one, not two, but three systems will be involved, which will only talk to each other through a fourth system.

The design is assembled and, therefore, everything needs to go smoothly. Until the pitfalls of incremental delivery begin to emerge:

Meanwhile, what is a BA doing? What a lot of people see: nothing. What a BA actually does: documentation, testing, speeding up communication between the various personas of the project (client included), testing, keeping requirements updated, opening bugs… did I mention testing?!

The beginning of the great challenge: Continuous Adaptation

Projects are made by people. People are themselves, constantly iterating projects, and a person is not based on binary code. There is much more on a person than zeros and ones… It’s easy to see why I ordered this as point fourth on the table: aversion to change!

Change is a much more complex verb than its syntax. It refers to the process of moving from one state, a condition or situation to another. It can involve transformation in several aspects: attitudes, behaviors, processes, and structures… It can be natural or driven, for example, by the search for improvement or adaptation. However, if a requirement can change at the speed of light, for a person to change, it is perhaps one of the most difficult actions.

Effective change management is very important, helping people and organizations to face transitions positively and take advantage of the opportunities that change can bring. How? Educating and communicating the effectiveness and benefits of incremental delivery and paradigm shifts throughout the project. Honesty and sharing are the basis.

Now, a BA is that person who “forces” others to accept and embrace change. It seems like things are starting to get complicated, right?

The big challenge: Collaboration and communication

If only it were as easy to communicate as it is to send messages through Kafka! Whoever agrees with me, raise your hand!

We return to the same: people.If we were MuleSoft APIs that can only transmit the information they receive, it could be easy. But we are beings that accumulate information and react to it. We map and transform data almost continuously, while we can change states (of mind), sometimes faster than calling an API. And, whether due to a lack of trust or too much trust, we tend to filter information, hiding fears and trying not to show weaknesses. So, this is when in the successful response blame (in others) and/or excuses (about what was not done) may arise!

When a BA/tester opens a bug in a given system, it doesn’t matter who developed that part that has a bug. The objective is just one: for the test to be carried out successfully and to deliver functionality to the customer.

But is this what the team feels? Human sensitivity and fragility are easily affected when our efforts are put into perspective. And truth to be told, who likes to fail?

So here come the difficulties in collaboration and communication: “that’s not mine”, “that’s from another system”, “it’s not my fault!”. Who has heard, or said, these phrases? All of us, at some point, for sure.

In conclusion, this point is the biggest challenge, as it is necessary to keep people focused on the solution and not the problem and convey the message that it doesn’t matter where the blame comes from, but rather where the resolution is.

The BA scope: to navigate daily challenges

With everything said until now, we can conclude that being a Business Analyst is much more than what the job description says:

• It is the Get…/daily-motivation and Put…/team-and-client-trust-and-encouragement APIs that always give 200 – Success.
• It’s being able to turn around each test that returns 500 – Internal Server Error.
• It’s not to despair when it must be Job Repeat-all-tasks.
• It’s learning how to fill in new mandatory fields that appear daily…
• And it’s especially about ensuring that the team is really a team and not just a group of people working together.

How can we achieve all this? With openness, honesty, being the first to admit failures and help with solutions and a lot of trustworthy daily work: being a BA, and adapting to everyone, without blame or excuses.

If it’s easy, no! There are days that really seem like a curse. But honestly, what is life without challenges?

Now that I catch your attention, let’s have a coffee while reading this article?

We’re used to our body responses to physical and mental efforts – we get tired. Bad sleeping, running, practice sports, working… these are all situations that increase our fatigue. And this happens because of some biological responses behind!

During the day, our body produces Adenosine, that binds to specific brain receptors, inhibiting the nervous system and causing tiredness. Basically, this process is essential for us to feel sleepy, helping the proper functioning of our circadian rhythm.

In this case, where does coffee come in and how does it help us to feel more awake?

The composition.

Coffee, and other products such as certain teas, chocolates and even ice cream, have caffeine in their composition, which binds to various molecular receptors in our brain, functioning as a stimulant for our nervous system.

When we drink coffee, caffeine molecules enter our circulatory system, traveling to our brain.

Both caffeine and adenosine are molecules from the xanthine group, this is, part of their structure is identical. This makes caffeine an antagonistic molecule for adenosine receptors, which means that they will compete for the same cell receptors in our brain.

Image: Adenosine vs. Caffeine molecules. Green highlights indicate the similar structure regions between both molecules.

It’s nothing but healthy competition!

When there are adenosine and caffeine molecules traveling in our blood system, is more likely that the cell receptors bind to caffeine molecules. Thus, when competing for these spots, the caffeine molecules reduce the number of adenosines that bind to the receptors and, consequently, the sleeping sensation is reduced, and the alertness is increased.

So, this is how coffee helps us to have energy for coding, you may ask?

Negative, my friend! This action does not exactly promote energy production in our bodies.

Its action is to prevent you from feeling drowsy and tired, since the molecules responsible for this sensation are deprived of doing their job.

Image: Caffeine and Adenosine competition for brain cellular receptors.

We can say then that caffeine tricks our brain to fell less tired, avoiding the sleepy signs.

When caffeine leaves our body, adenosine molecules still ager to do its job and the feeling of tiredness sets in again. It’s time for another cup of coffee, the Kryptonite of our sleep!

But be careful, you need to pay attention to quantities!

How much is too much?

Attention now! Caffeine also causes neuronal excitation in the brain, which is recognized by the pituitary gland as an emergency and stimulates the adrenal glands to release adrenaline – the source of the “fight or flight”!

This makes us react more quickly, instead of acting deliberately. Such an effect may be excellent if we are being chased by a wild lion, but not so good when we must find that crazy lost comma in the middle of a code with hundreds of lines.

Did you know that… caffeine also raises the dopamine levels? This substance works as some opioid drugs, binding to neurotransmitters responsible for sending messages between the brain and the body. Although on a much smaller scale, this is why some scientists defend caffeine as an addictive product.

Beware of too much caffeine!

The truth is that this molecule can disturb our sleep cycle, make us sleep worse and therefore reduce our quality of life. Sleeping is essential for the body and the brain to launch their nightly Jobs of restoring the system, ensuring its proper functioning, with the best response from all its “APIs”.

Without a good night’s sleep, our body is unable to have the energy it needs for all the metabolic and physical processes we need daily.

In addition, caffeine excess can also increase our heart rate and make us feel more jittery and anxious.

As it is a molecule that causes some dependence, the lack of caffeine can also cause a reduction in cognitive performance and have a negative impact on our mood. To get back to normal, you need a new dose of caffeine, which can bring good performance, but it will only be for a short period.

But I drink coffee and I’m still sleepy…

It’s true, there are people for whom coffee has no effect. And genetics appears to be the primarily responsible! However, even what we eat (the nutrients) can influence this effect.

This is a subject that has been studied and the scientific community already lists some factors for the difference in the effect of caffeine in humans:

• Different ability to metabolize (digest) coffee.
• Number of neurotransmitters (receptors) available to receive caffeine.
• Binding capacity (affinity) between receptors and caffeine molecules (genetic issues).
• The body’s resistance to caffeine molecules, where receptors are no longer fooled, due, for example, to excessive consumption.

In fact, coffee doesn’t help you Coding because it doesn’t know any technology, but if you’re lucky, if your genetics allow it, and if you use the right dose, it can help you keep your senses alert!

I hope you have enjoyed this article!

Sincerely,

A coffee lover that doesn’t live without her morning coffee.

Flávia Leitão
Business Analyst at Polarising