Senior Business Analyst – 12 month contract

Job Description

Duties & Responsibilities :

Results Delivery:

Contribute to the crafting of IT departmental business plan to ensure delivery of focus areas for the year in support of IT strategy.
Apply cost-effectiveness principles in planning and delivery to contribute to the achievement of divisional financial targets.
Provide relevant input into the formalization of the divisional budget.
Manage allocated budget by tracking costs and recommending solutions that meet critical business needs.
Guide the business on the best system solution selection to ensure fit to the client’s requirements and meet future strategic objectives.

Stakeholder Relationship Management:

Champion Business Analyst services with stakeholders.
Observe and be involved in the day to day operations to understand the business domain and business needs and requirements of relevant stakeholders.
Provide insight regarding BA methodologies and best practices to internal clients to enable a BA presence in the business.
Maintain and build relationships with Business Owners to ensure the BA team is consulted and involved in initiatives that may require IT support.
Determine business requirements and actively manage key projects to ensure expectations are met.
Conduct Business Owner feedback sessions with every milestone phase of a project to inform business of progress, manage business expectations proactively and measure the effectiveness of Business Process Improvement.
Build relationships with other IT teams, like enterprise Architecture. and other key counterparts
Ensure regular engagement (as needed) with all stakeholders to gain visibility and maintain relationships through networks utilizing social media, attending and presenting at conferences and training interventions.
Build strategic JSE / Industry/ Global network of thought leaders and relationships utilising social media, attending and presenting at conferences and training interventions.
Meet stakeholder needs accurately by following the Business Analyst process flow methodology to maintain quality and consistency of service provided.
Manage stakeholder relationships by communicating openly and honestly with regard to project status

Process Management:

Manage own delivery on multiple and/or complex projects against departmental delivery plan and set timelines, identify obstacles to delivery and take appropriate action where required
Receive request from business to start new project and conduct stakeholder analysis to clearly define the relevant people required for information gathering.
Gather supporting information by holding interviews, conducting surveys, running workshops and reviewing existing documents and information.
Draft a full system requirements plan to detail the activities and outputs
Execute the requirements plan in alignment with Software Development Lifecycle process to ensure compliance.
Obtain system project classification by presenting the business requirement to the initiation forum.
Conduct a cost and benefit analysis to assess the feasibility of the requirements.
Produce a business case study by assessing solution options, considering costing and risks to formulate a recommendation.
Support the business sponsor to develop and present the business case.
Create the business requirements specification document to confirm clarity of business scope.
Create the functional requirements specification document to translate the business requirements into functional requirements.
Present functional requirements specification to all stakeholders to validate the requirements and solution.
Recommend the most effective course of action after evaluating options against decision criteria.
Provide regular feedback and progress to all stakeholders on current projects.
Review the technical design specifications to check that all requirements are included.
Review the test cases to ensure that it covers all scenarios related to the functional requirements.
Assist the development team and testers in performing root cause analysis for any functional defects.
Perform ad-hoc functional testing for quality assurance.
Ensure correct utilization of solutions developed by creating user training manuals.
Assist business by project coordination of deliverables for small initiatives.
Proactively or by request identify obstacles to performance relating to process flow and identify opportunities for optimisation.
Assist users in being effective by utilizing the new solution productively
Partner with the project manager/lead to contribute to the development of the Senior Business Analysts role and delivery plan (proactively being involved upfront to just confirm the scope of the Senior Business Analyst’s end-to-end role in the project to mitigate any risk of misunderstanding who will be doing what) to ensure a successful solution delivery output.
Reduce time spent on projects by elicitation, analysis and optimization of business requirements
Contribute to BA COE practice development by presenting courses to the team.

Self Management:

Improve personal capability and professional growth relating to field of expertise, in line with the business objectives by discussing development needs and proposed solutions with management.
Keep abreast of changes in legislation or standards by conducting research and utilizing networks
Skill team and other professionals by sharing knowledge and research results.
Epitomize living the business values, displaying professional conduct and adherence to required technical standards.
Transformation and Innovation Contribution:

Analyse, research, develop, and implement improvement/innovative ideas and value-adding solutions contributing to divisional and business results.

Desired Experience & Qualification

Bachelors Degree or Diploma in Information Technology or Engineering.
Business Analyst Certification from a reputable institution.
Minimum 8 years experience as a Business Analyst.

Technical Competencies:

Basic software applications (e.g., Outlook, Word, Excel, Access, Internet, Email).
Divisional service offerings.
Budget forecast assumptions.
Business continuity standard.
Business principles.
Data analysis.
Decision-making process.
International Standards for Professional Practice
Package & Remuneration
Market-related