Business Analyst

Job Description

Posted Wednesday 13 August 2025 at 00:00

Established in 1981 with a single store in the Northwest of England, the JD Group is a leading omni-channel retailer of Sports Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with our colleagues working in stores across several retail fascias in many markets around the world.

JD Sports Fashion Plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996 and has been a FTSE100 publicly quoted company since 2019 and continues to grow in the UK and internationally.

We want to be the leading global omnichannel retailer in the sports and outdoor industry. To be a part of this successful company and help us to achieve this you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people-led, innovative and customer-focused organisation which provides operational excellence whilst identifying new areas of growth as part of our day to day objectives.

Business Analyst

Reports To: Lead Business Analyst
Line Management Responsibility: No

Role overview:
As a Business Analyst within the Group Transformation function, you will be working on complex and high priority initiatives across the JD Group to support change delivery and unlock the JD strategy. Business Analysts within Group Transformation will work on cross-functional Programmes or be embedded within an Agile Product squad.

As part of your role, you will work closely with business stakeholders, Programme and Project Managers, Developers, Architects, Suppliers, Testers, and Product team members. You will be a key member in the BA community where you will promote best practice and help the team to evolve and grow.

Quality and agility will be at the heart of everything you do, driving improvements that help us deliver quicker to market whilst giving our customers the best possible experience. Business Analysts will be highly performing, highly engaged colleagues passionate about business analysis, delivering great results and their own personal development.

Key Role Responsibilities:

• Ensure new initiatives are understood and the wider impact is known to the business.
• Lead or support the leading of requirements workshops with all stakeholder groups identified for the initiative.
• Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders at all levels of the business.
• Lead the elicitation and documentation of requirements, applying BA techniques to drive out the requirement.
• Prioritise business requirements using appropriate techniques.
• Validate that requirements are in line with objectives and scope, identifying and managing conflicts.
• Confident working in an agile or waterfall environment, with an understanding of the pros and cons of each approach.
• Play a leading role in a Product Squad, supporting the Product Manager during Discovery, ideation and initiative definition.
• Own and drive forward the requirements during Agile delivery, creating, estimating and prioritising user stories, maintaining the backlog with a focus on delivering value to the business.
• Strong process mapping skills, developing and adapting comprehensive As-Is and To-Be models
• Support the coaching and mentoring of the BA team, continually look for ways to improve working practices and the overall BA service.
• Take responsibility for your personal development, including working with your manager to set objectives and milestones and identify your training needs.
• Engage in promoting new ways of working and supporting technologies that will assist the team to become more efficient and deliver a higher quality of business analysis.

Competencies:

The following list includes some key competencies and behaviours associated to the role of Business Analyst. The competencies below align Group Transformation competencies with ones from the wider company list of JD competencies. For a full list of GT competencies and levels by role please refer to the published GT competency framework.

• Coping with pressure and setbacks: The ability to work productively in a high-pressure environment and keep emotions under control during difficult situations. The ability to balance the demands of work whilst maintaining a positive outlook. The ability to take on board feedback and to learn from it in a positive way.
• Adapting and responding to change: The ability to adapt to changing circumstances, to accept new ideas and initiatives. Ability to adapt interpersonal style to suit different people and situations, showing respect and sensitivity towards cultural and religious differences.
• Persuading, influencing and stakeholder management: The ability to build and sustain the support to achieve intended outcomes and resolve conflict by making a strong personal impression on others, gaining clear agreement and commitment from others by persuading, convincing and negotiating, promoting ideas on behalf of self and others, provide relevant and timely communications that support the successful delivery of the initiative and drive decisions.
• Analysing: The ability to capture, assess, justify & prioritise business requirements in a comprehensive, measurable and traceable way to satisfy business need. The ability to analyse numerical data, verbal data and other sources of information. The ability to break information into component parts identifying patterns and relationships. The ability to probe for further information or greater understanding of the problem and make rational judgements from the information and analysis available. The ability to produce workable solutions to a range of problems and demonstrate an understanding of how one issue may be part of a much larger system. The ability to assess the costs and potential benefits of new processes, organisational structures and workflows. And to communicate this to stakeholders to inform decision making.
• Management of controls, deciding and initiating action: The ability to make and seek from others prompt, clear decisions which may involve tough choices or considered risks. Taking full responsibility for actions, projects and people in the team. The ability to identify and monitor risks to plan, implement appropriate responses to those risks, and respond to issues that affect the initiative. The ability to manage variations and change requests in a controlled way. The ability to assure through ongoing assessments and reviews, that deliverables meet the quality standards defined and expected by the business.

Skills & Qualifications:

The following skills and qualifications are typical to the role of a Business Analyst. The list is non-exhaustive, and it is not compulsory for every BA to have those skills and qualifications listed below.

Professional Experience
• 2–5 years of experience in business analysis or a related role.
• Experience working with stakeholders to gather and document requirements.
• Exposure to project management and software development processes.

Technical Skills
• Tools: Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, JIRA, Confluence, Trello.
• Data analysis: Basic SQL, Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP), Power BI, Looker
• Documentation: BRD (Business Requirements Document), FRD (Functional Requirements Document), user stories.
• Modelling: Process flow diagrams, use case diagrams, wireframes.

Example Certifications associated to the role:
• ECBA (Entry Certificate in Business Analysis) – IIBA
• CCBA (Certification of Capability in Business Analysis) – IIBA
• PMI-PBA (Professional in Business Analysis) – PMI
• Agile certifications: Scrum Master (CSM), Product Owner (CSPO)

Group Transformation – Expectation of our Colleagues:
As a Group Transformation colleague, you’re expected to act as a connector, strategist, and disciplined executor. You help translate ambition into action by aligning stakeholders, driving outcomes, and role-modelling the mindset needed to make change stick. Your role is pivotal in ensuring our transformation delivers value at scale, across all parts of the JD Group.

Key Services of the Business Analysis Function
Group Transformation Business Analysts are expected to be able to deliver the following services to a high standard in order to drive improvements that support the ability to deliver quicker to market whilst giving our customers the best possible experience:

Tools and Techniques – Selects and is an expert in the use of appropriate Business Analysis tools and techniques required for complex tasks and / or lifecycles.

Stakeholder Engagement and Communication Management – Communicating effectively to engage and influence, utilising techniques like influence vs interest. Ability to build a relationship as a \’trusted advisor\’ where challenge is expected and welcomed.

Problem Analysis – Leads problem statement creation for high impact projects and coaches\’ others in strategic problem definition.

Estimating – Leads estimation efforts for large complex initiatives, selecting the best approach and mentoring others in estimation techniques.

Workshop Facilitation – Designs and facilitates high impact workshops, mentoring others in advance techniques and managing challenging group dynamics.

Functional and Non-Functional Requirements Elicitation and Gathering – Leads requirement gathering sessions, capturing complex functional and non-functional needs across diverse stakeholders. Consistently and independently conducts elicitation sessions in complex scenarios, adapting techniques as needed.

Requirements Documentation – Produces high-quality, detailed documentation in complex scenarios, confidently capturing nuanced requirements.

Business Process Mapping and Improvement – Skilfully develops and adapts comprehensive As-Is and To-Be models, effectively identifying improvement areas and supporting strategic process changes. Effectively manages and drives improvement initiatives in complex environments, leveraging best practices to create measurable, long-term process efficiencies.

Business Case – Skilfully develops comprehensive business cases for complex initiatives, tailoring them to inform and influence executive decisions effectively.

RFP / Tender process input – Effectively leads RFP input for complex projects, guiding the selection process to identify the most suitable vendors.

We know our colleagues work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits including staff Discount On JD Group and other brands within the organisation and personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work.

JD Sports- Head Office, Warwick House, Bury, Bury, United Kingdom