Business Analyst (Senior) at Discovery Limited

Key Purpose

The Lead Business Analyst manages the key outputs of Business Analysts for the applications that operate and integrate across business areas, maintains views of the business for a suite of products/application services supported by the Business Unit. The Lead Business Analyst has a view of the key interrelationships of the different applications, systems and technologies deployed for a particular business, across businesses and understand how these integrate to deliver business value.

The Lead Business Analyst coordinates and works with Business Architects to develop an integrated view of the enterprise from a business perspective employing appropriate industry standards in the process. The Lead Business Analyst owns the end-to-end functional delivery of an application and drives results through other Business Analysts assigned to that business product.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to:

• Systematically investigates, analyses and documents all or part of a business area in terms of business functions, processes, integration and information usage requirements across a stack of applications
• Identifies and examines business needs for various business units and the dependencies between these and determines effective and timely solutions to business functions and processes
• Acts as a liaison between IT development teams and business areas
• Evaluates and documents the business architecture, participates in proof of concepts to determine feasibility, writes proposals, creates functional requirements in terms of the Agile methodology for new and existing changes across a stack of applications
• Comprehensive documentation of test plans, implementation plans and coordination of both testing and implementation effort to ensure a successful implementation
• Drives and facilitates discussions with product owners to identify IT capabilities in relation to current and future IT objectives
• Works closely with the Business Architecture and Systems Architecture teams across the business, Heads of Engineering, Heads of Product,  and Development Teams, and leadership teams to help develop effective IT roadmaps
• Works closely with business architects and other Lead Business Analysts across the Group to align standards and practices
• Identifies and assists with problem resolution for project/program requirements related issues at all levels
• Provides leadership guidance, makes recommendations and collaborates with business to ensure solutions meet the business need on a complex project or program
• Engages stakeholders to take action. Serves as a source of expert advice, influences change, frames information in a broader organisational context
• Solves unique and ambiguous problems with broad impact. Oversees standards, controls and operating methods utilised by the department
• Anticipates emerging business trends and regulatory/risk issues as a basis for recommending large-scale product, technical, functional or operations improvements
• Helps identify and captures the strategic goals that provide traceability through the department and are mapped to metrics that provide ongoing governance
• Establishes how positions, skills and teams are related across all stakeholders. Thereafter, decomposition of those teams into corresponding subunits
• Acts as a mentor to the Business Analyst competence area and drives contribution to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge within the Group.
• Provides reviews of initiative documentation done by other Business Analysts and Business Architects within the Group

Personal Attributes and Skills

Behavioral competencies

• Customer Service Orientation
• Result Orientation
• Conflict Resolution
• Negotiation skills
• Time Management
• Business writing skills
• Presentation skills
• Facilitation skills
• Analytic and systemic thinking
• Project Management
• Conceptual thinking
• Passion for learning
• Professional Communication (written and verbal)
• Creativeness
• Innovation
• Stress Management
• Assertiveness
• Tenacity

Technical Competencies:

• SQL, UML and XML
• Project Management
• SQL queries
• Business Writing Skills
• Presentation and Facilitation Skills
• Solution Architecture
• Process & Data mapping
• Entity Diagram mapping
• Software testing pack design
• High Level BA functional testing
• User Story and Acceptance criteria writing skills
• TOGAF, CMMi BPMN, Modelling, ArchiType,
• Process Design

Education & Experience

Education

• Bachelors degree or equivalent qualification
• BCom (Informatics) BSc (Compute Science or Information Systems) or Engineering or Data Science or Mathematics or Statistics is advantageous

Experience

• 7-10 years Business Analysis of which 5 years are at a Senior levelCross departmental experience
• Scrum Master experience is advantageous

Advantageous

• Usability Design
• SDLC
• Agile