Honeywell

Process

Honeywell's Launch IT program pairs interns with managers within Honeywell, who then assign interns to impactful work within the company. An emphasis is placed on professional development by exposing interns to the wealth of knowledge present at Honeywell through weekly conversations with industry experts. By working on a large multinational team, interns must learn how to stand out from the crowd and are encouraged to expand their skillsets by taking advantage of the diverse work happening across the company.

During my internship in Summer 2021, I was assigned to four projects detailed below.

Create data visualizations that reveal server errors.

Honeywell began using Nagios XI to monitor the status of computers and servers across the company. A number of these monitors returned an "Unknown" error, signaling that Nagios couldn't communicate with the server and therefore could not report an accurate status. I was asked to take the data from Nagios and create a dashboard that could reveal the cause of such unknown errors. After debating between using APIs and Tableau, we sent all data to ServiceNow reporting to expand the capabilites of software currently in use at Honeywell. Using some basic data queries, we were able to reveal what hosts and operating systems were often the cause of such errors.

Our dashboard built in ServiceNow Reporting using Nagios error data

Extend catalog inputs into ServiceNow.

As teams across Honeywell needed to collect information from employees, they submitted catalog tasks into ServiceNow. I fulfilled four of these requests and created new forms within ServiceNow that interacted with the database. These forms often included special customization to pull content from ServiceNow, limit access to catalogs, and reveal and hide certain fields as necessary. Keeping up with catalog tasks was essential to maintaining company morale with a committment to the new service management platform.

Balance work across the corporate IT team.

As work increased for the corporate IT team at Honeywell, certain employees took on more responsibility than others. Teams often felt understaffed, and managers regularly worked overtime so they could complete their assignments after a full day of meetings. I was asked to join a team exploring how Scrum could be implemented within the IT team to make the best use of the staff currently available. Our research concluded with a presentation to the top leadership within the Operations and Strategy tower.

The slides of our Scrum presentation

Making it easy for employees to learn new skills.

Honeywell allows employees to change roles every 18 months. To help them with their own professional development and ensure top-level talent in each new role, Honeywell wanted to develop a new learning experience platform that would unify their existing training resources while also providing new ways to motivate self-learning.

Working with software vendor EdCast, I joined the team building this platform and led four other interns in the initial round of user testing. I created a think-aloud guide to keep the team consistent and taught them how to properly lead a think-aloud test - all were new to the technique. We completed 16 tests over two weeks and translated our insights into 15 prioritized tips for the development team. Because of our work testing the platform, we helped ensure the official rollout of the new learning experience platform would be smooth and easy to use. This is critical to encourage employees to try the platform and continue coming back.

One of the five tasks we asked users to attempt in our think-aloud test

One of the fifteen findings we noticed from our user testing

My main insights from my experience at Honeywell.

1. I gained a better understanding of my interests in IT and developed a more focused career direction. I love to work on developing new products and leading teams.
2. Do what it takes to get a task done and never be afraid to ask for help. At a large company, no one will ever know everything. Always stay open to learning new things.
3. It can be difficult to find a balance between over- and under-communicating with managers and teammates. Often, the right strategy depends on the work style of the person you’re communicating with.
4. You lead your own career. Don’t wait to be told what to do. Push yourself into projects that interest you. Spend time now developing yourself into your next role.