Focused careers

Business Analyst

Full Term Contract – 1 Year Covering Maternity Leave

Purpose

The Business Analyst reporting to the Business Architect, will be responsible for gathering and analysing business requirements, expressing these as business scenarios and user stories, preparation of documentation and specifications and undertaking detailed analysis tasks such as data mapping.

Where assigned the Business Analyst will also act as product owner, liaising with the business owner and clients to validate that solutions delivered meet their requirements, ensuring appropriate escalation where this is not achieved or does not look like it will be achieved.

Solving design issues and challenges is an important part of the role and the role holder will be expected to identify root causes, solution options and implications, working with both business and technical colleagues.

Dimensions

As a Business Analyst your main responsibilities will involve:

• Liaising with clients and third parties
• Determining and documenting requirements
• Analysing and challenging client business needs
• Support the creation of the backlog and associated users stories
• Estimation of analysis tasks within agreed tolerances
• Undertake data mapping analysis, mapping our integration partners schemas with our schema
• Contributing to the design of solutions
• Preparing process flows and visualisations to support the design process
• Producing solutions documents and functional specifications
• Work collaboratively with the wider team including , developers, testers and others to ensure that high quality software is produced that meets the needs of our customers
• Liaise with the business owner and clients to validate that solutions delivered meet their requirements, ensuring appropriate escalation where this is not achieved or does not look like it will be achieved
• Investigate and resolve assigned defects capturing all appropriate information in the defect tracking tool
• Assist QA and Support teams to identify and resolve software issues – leading analysis, communicating options for resolution and providing recommendations
• Take responsibility for completing assigned tasks according to the agreed timescale providing regular feedback on progress and alerting the Delivery Lead to any risk to a timely delivery

Key Outputs

• A full understanding of the functional and business requirements of the work that you are undertaking
• Provision of initiate and product requirement documents (PRDs) to a standard that can be estimated, designed and built within an acceptable tolerance
• Creation of user stories and backlog items to a testable standard
• Production and maintenance of solution overviews and functional specifications
• Estimation of analysis tasks
• Supporting internal and client workshops and meetings

Authorisations and Limits

• Where designated, product owner within scrum team
• Communication and engagement with clients and integration partners regarding requirements and solution scope

Qualifications / Experience (Depth and breadth of specialised knowledge)

As Business Analyst you will have:

• A clear understanding of the market space and the requirements of a typical client
• A good understanding of data models and ability to interpret XML schemas
• The ability to accurately collate and report on significant amounts of information from a variety of sources
• The ability to analyse and understand client business needs and challenge where appropriate
• The ability to determine and document requirements
• The ability to contribute to the design of and documenting solutions
• The ability to produce and update supporting documentation including functional specifications and solution overviews
• The ability to produce backlog documents
• The ability to prepare supporting process flows and screen layouts
• A thorough understanding of the processes, methods & standards operating in the organisation
• A strong attention to detail with a focus on quality
• Excellent organisation, analytical and communication skills, with a proven ability to communicate and influence both verbally and in writing
• The ability to influence a range of stakeholders (internal and external)
• The ability to influence business and system design decisions
• Proven ability to work across boundaries
• A self-motivated nature with the ability to work on own initiative and under instruction, to tight deadlines, under pressure and without compromising quality
• A proactive and highly disciplined work ethic
• A creative and inquisitive nature when it comes to technology based business solutions
• Commercial awareness
• A driven, energetic and enthusiastic, with a ‘can do, will do’ approach
• Flexibility in role, approach and skills
• A willingness to travel and work on customer sites from time to time

You should also have:

• Be educated to degree level, ideally in discipline related to Software Engineering
• A methodical approach to work with the ability to ‘think outside the box’
• The ability to troubleshoot and diagnose problems
• A good understanding of when to use different communication mediums
• Commercially awareness

Desirable

• A background in software programming
• Experience of working with and integrating with IFA software systems
• Desire to travel and work overseas

Key Personal Competencies

• Customer Focus – Knowing who your customers are, keeping the meeting of their needs at the forefront of mind and taking responsibility for the service delivered to them
• Preference for Action – Grasping issues that require resolution and ensuring that appropriate effective action is taken
• Communicating and Influencing – The ability to communicate effectively, influencing others to act and/or commit support to one’s own goals and objectives
• Creative and Innovative Thinking – The ability to think creatively or innovatively
• Business Knowledge – Having a sound grasp of the Company’s plans and operating environment, the factors relevant to one’s own role and the interaction between one’s own role and others’ within the Company and outside
• Planning and Organising – The ability to develop clear and logical step-by-step plans for self and for others which set out what needs to happen, when, how and by whom