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The Senior Business Analyst is a trained individual who is committed to solving business problems for our customers and helping them realize value. The Senior business analyst defines improvements to business processes, assists decision-makers in gathering information to make decisions, helps quality assurance test solutions and products, designs user interfaces and even steps in as a product owner when the occasion calls for. The business analyst may define a set of requirements as a standalone document to outline what must be done by the organization to move to new facilities and then prepare the user stories in a just in time approach for an agile development team. The business analyst must be able to adapt to the business process, the software development process, or even a lack of process, and to any and all management directives, and not be focused on a single process or framework.

Primary Responsibilities for the Role

• Works closely with customer, product owner and project stakeholders to understand the business challenges.
• Works closely with the development group in the design and implementation of a solution.
• The business analyst helps the team and product owner understand and describe the business domain and problem to be solved by facilitating the discussions around: business processes, stakeholder identification and experience, business policies and rules etc.
• Assists the Product Owner maintain and groom the product backlog by considering purpose and value, prioritization of user stories, splitting of epics, and ensuring a complete description of the solution.
• Acts as a business coach in the organization by investigating and keeping abreast of existing customer systems and procedures.
• Defines, evaluates and presents feasible and practical business solutions to the team.
• Creates accurate business documents and functional specifications according to agreed standards and timelines
• Keeps abreast with best practices and industry norms.
• May be required to assist the project manager with project deliverables.
• Builds and maintains relationships with operational and sales personal to understand and anticipate internal and external customer needs and market demands.
• Provides input and works closely with Sales, Account, Product or Portfolio Management to contribute towards the delivery of RFP's, RFQ's, change request, impact assessments, and feasibility studies.
• Provide quality reviews of built solutions in the form of reviewing test cases. Where applicable the candidate may need to engage in the execution of test samples to derive conclusion.
• May on demand need to step into demonstrate the solution that is in progress.
• Must be flexible to travel (nationally or internationally)

1. Available and Engaged

A key aspect of the role is being available to answer questions from the development team. Questions can arise at any time and any delay will impact the capability of the team. The most successful projects have fully engaged business analysts working daily as an integral part of the team. Provides motivation and support to others.

2. Decisive

The development team's questions must be answered promptly and with authority. Delaying decisions will prevent the work planned from being completed, and frequently reversing previous decisions will lead to a lack of trust. There is a balance to be made, but with the knowledge of the customer and support of internal stakeholders the product owner is in the best position to make these decisions.

3. Good Domain Knowledge

The business analyst must have a good understanding of the target customers’ needs and appropriate business knowledge to assist the Product Owner in coordinating with project stakeholders. This requires strong professional relationships with customers and team.

4. Great Communication

This role requires an excellent communicator, collaborator and “people person” capable of sharing the business problem and aligning the team. High emotional intelligence will help to collaborate and steer the product development to a successful conclusion. Has the ability to expresses ideas and information in a clear and concise manner. Delivers information in a manner that is interesting and compelling to the audience. Tailors message to fit the interests and needs of the audience. Able to relate to a variety of different audience members.

5. Driving Value

Actively seeking and implementing opportunities to maximize value in any aspect of the business. Setting a culture of continuously striving for better performance. Challenging the current state in order to seek real improvements

6. Leading Self

Taking responsibility and accountability for own behaviour, performance and development. Taking ownership for own performance and decisions and their impact on the business. Demonstrating tenacity and resilience even when faced with obstacles. Seeking opportunities for personal feedback, learning and development. Acting decisively when tough or quick action is required.

Desired Skills, Experience and Qualities:

Education & Qualification

• Bachelor’s degree/ similar qualification in IT or Business and 5 years of related experience

Relevant Experience

• More than 5 years’ experience as a Business Analyst in an IT environment.
• Proven experience with business and functional and non-functional requirements analysis, modelling, verification and development with at least 5 - 10 years BA experience.
• Systems (holistic) thinking skills - excellent analytical and creative problem-solving skills.
• Management/leadership skills
• Familiar with the following concepts (advantageous):

• Minimal Viable Product (MVP) vs Minimal Marketable Features (MMF)
• Product Roadmap
• User Story mapping
• Story Decomposition
• Behaviour Driven Development
• Lightweight Documentation

• ERP experience
• Experience in a consulting environment
• Business process re-engineering
• Functional design experience
• Non-functional design experience
• PPBA or CBAP certification an advantage
• Experience or exposure to tools that facilitate BPM and requirements documentation e.g AxurePro, EAP or MSVisio (advantageous)