Senior Business Analyst

Requirements

• Extensive Business Analysis or relevant knowledge gained from recognised bodies (BCS, BABOK, Agile PO)
• Leading the analysis as part of a multi-disciplinary team
• Demonstrably able to select the appropriate business modelling techniques that are most effective to help people understand the situations, problems, and solutions
• Can recommend and influence improvements to business structures, processes and information flows supported appropriately with automation and technology
• Breadth of effective techniques to define and manage requirements, prioritisation, and scope with others in a range of different types of change methodologies and situations
• Defining or selecting standards and applying appropriate techniques to elicit and document requirements
• Managing traceability of, change to and the refinement of requirements, identifying issues and omissions and managing escalations
• Leading work that delivers effectively and efficiently in fast paced environments, in agile and waterfall project methodologies
• Extensive experience of working in different project methodologies and awareness of how to adapt their practice
• Excellent stakeholder management to understand objectives and resolve tension and conflict
• Good problem solving and analytical skills, including the ability to create clear observations, analysis and conclusions based on customer interviews, published requirements and data
• A confident written and verbal communicator
• Pro-active approach to personal and professional development, and mentoring of others in Business Analysis
• Best practice (Desirable)
• Practical experience and knowledge of Lean practices (Desirable)
• Systems Thinking (Desirable)
• Understanding of public services and technology marketplace with knowledge of products, platforms and emerging technologies (Desirable)
• Knowledge of Business Architecture (TOGAF, BIZBOK) (Desirable)
• Specialist knowledge in a business domain or other digital specialism (Desirable)
• Specialist knowledge in security, data and privacy (Desirable)
• Knowledge and understanding of GDS Service Standards (Desirable)
• Knowledge and understanding of software development lifecycles (Desirable)
• Experience in managing story development in tools such as JIRA, Azure DevOps or similar (Desirable)
• Experience in collaborative and remote tooling (Teams, Slack, MIRO, Mural) (Desirable)
• Ability to understand complex financial issues combined with deep analytical skills (Desirable)
• Experience of working in scrum environments with team definitions of ready and done (Desirable)
• Experience of working with APIs e.g. specifying API requirements / payloads, testing APIs (Desirable)
• Experience of data modelling. Specifically, the ability to understand, create and update Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs). Experience of working with logical data models (LDMs) (Desirable)
• Good understanding of data catalogues i.e. populating, maintaining them (Desirable)
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to liaise between multiple product teams and relay clients' data needs
• Resilience
• Strong collaboration and team working
• Good Communication skills
• Genuine passion/commitment to improving public services
• A determined and tenacious approach to work
• A creative approach to problem solving
• Good listening and comprehension
• Great stakeholder management

What the job involves

The Senior Business Analyst will typically play a leading role in a DDaT multidisciplinary team, within agile and waterfall project environments. They will apply analytical and problem‑solving tools to assess situations and understand problems, eliciting, analysing, validating, and gaining consensus on business requirements and user stories. The role will involve leading business analysts in small to medium sized projects and supporting the analysis of more complex transformations. They will be responsible for leading a variety of business analysis tasks, working independently to deliver the required outputs, managing stakeholder relationships, and developing others through sharing best practice and mentoring.

The ideal candidate will have experience applying business analysis skills in digital transformations across a number of different styles of transformation. They will have experience and knowledge underpinned by the tailored use of several frameworks and methodologies to perform as an effective analyst. They will understand the UK public services landscape, with knowledge in one or more sectors. In addition to business analysis skills, they will have experience in how emerging technologies and innovation can benefit the delivery of improved public services.

The role will be home based and will include work on client sites. It is expected that the Senior Business Analyst will quickly acquire an understanding of Methods Portfolio offering to work effectively for our clients. The role will support the development of our Business Analysis Service and Community of Practice.

Analyse and understand complex user and business needs, including where material is conflicting and drawn from multiple sources. Map complex processes and information flows into appropriate artefacts for communication with both stakeholders and the team. Translate user needs into system functionality requirements. Understand the internal and external situation and environment, eliciting and managing any non‑functional requirements. Track, review and manage requirements with appropriate stakeholders to maintain records of traceability and prioritisation. Negotiate with and persuade stakeholders with a balanced consultative approach to ensure that the principles of user centred design are balanced against service requirements. Write clear and concise user stories with clear and testable acceptance criteria. Contributing to Methods Business Analysis Community of Practice and mentoring other business analysts.