Description
Sr . Business Analyst (12 Month Contract)

Position S ummary ...

The Senior Business Analyst exhibits both a breadth and depth of knowledge and experience with analysis techniques, has experience working on different types of projects in different business areas and can come up to speed in a new domain quickly.

The Senior BA acts as a leader in the BA Team, providing mentorship to business analysts and promoting excellence and continuous improvement within the team. They ensure that team business analysis practices align with industry standards and work outputs support organizational goals. The Senior BA plans, supervises or leads the work of others on large projects or work efforts, as required.

The Senior Business Analyst acts as a liaison between teams inside the organization including product managers, software developers, educational researchers, content producers, and customer support representatives by translating customer and business needs into requirements.

The Senior Business Analyst works closely with Product Managers and other stakeholders to understand their vision for the product, to elaborate the requirements for that vision, and to deliver outputs that inform the solutions created by the technical teams.

Responsibilities ...

• BA Planning and Monitoring
• Independently plan and manage the completion of business analysis tasks to support initiative objectives.
• Provide estimates for analysis outputs, assess impact of proposed deliverables, and negotiate priorities with business stakeholders / manager.
• Ensure there is understanding of the initiative's objectives within the project team.
• Measure and track quality of BA work.
• Work with business stakeholders to identify needs, issues, and risks.
• Lead and implement business analysis best practices to ensure own output and business analyst output is in line with approved analysis methodology and tools.
• Actively contribute to improving methodology and tools.
• Plan, supervise or lead the work of others on large projects or work efforts.

Elicitation ...

• Interact and communicate with staff at all levels of the organization to elicit, document and validate requirements for proposed changes or approved projects.

Requirements Management and Communication...

• Ensure traceability of requirements from business need to solution.
• Manage changes to requirements and communicate this to stakeholders.
• Appropriately communicate requirements to diverse audiences.

Enterprise Analysis ...

• Identify and define the business need, problem definition and approach.
• Proactively identify improvements that would increase efficiency or productivity in work effort, processes, or application features.

Requirements Analysis ...

• Create analysis deliverables (e.g. user stories, workflow diagrams) to inform the stakeholder audience, both technical and non-technical, for the purposes of review and prioritization.
• Co-ordinate and facilitate the analysis and sign off process.
• Identify opportunities for, and ensure development is integrated with, other initiatives.

Solution Assessment and Validation ...

• Work with stakeholders to validate that the solution meets the business need.
• Ensure project close and hand over activities are completed.

Mentoring and Coaching ...

• Mentor and guide business analysts to ensure their outputs meet standards and their skills are developed.
• Review and monitor business analyst outputs.

Skills and A bilities...

• Analytical thinking and problem solving
• Demonstrates strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Applies a variety of creative interviewing techniques to identify needs, issues, and solutions, whilst working with a diverse audience (business, management, technical).
• Facilitates and maintains stakeholder confidence in the decision-making process.

Behavioral Characteristics...

• Exhibits strong self-starter attributes.
• Demonstrates a high level of personal organization for assigned analysis projects.
• Builds trust with stakeholders by applying honest and ethical standards in all interactions.
• Accepts responsibility for, and ownership of, personal errors.
• Remains confident and 'cool under pressure' to perform in situations that are filled with more ambiguity than clarity.

Business Knowledge...

• Understands the role of the business analysis practice within the software development life cycle and has applied analysis tools and techniques to successfully implement software products.
• Works effectively within different software development implementations, including Agile.
• Understands both the organizational and the technology goals.
• Understands the issues that influence and affect the education sector including problems, needs, pain points, challenges, and limitations.

Communication S kills ...

• Demonstrates strong oral and written communications.
• Effectively facilitates stakeholder sessions, ensuring success through preparedness and co- ordination.
• Applies facilitation techniques to keep discussions focused and organized.
• Adjusts style of written communications to meet the needs of the audi enc e

Interaction skills...

• Advocates for collaboration through teamwork and advanced interpersonal skills.
• Demonstrates advanced negotiation skills and applies different negotiation styles to influence decision-making.
• Works effectively across multiple and different-sized projects and teams concurrently.
• Builds relationships across the organization to better understand NWEA and its direction.

Software A pps...

• Demonstrates proficiency working within a Microsoft-based environment (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Outlook, SharePoint).
• Demonstrates the ability to learn specialized applications being used by the team.

Organizational Competencies...

• Instill trust: gain the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity
• Communicate effectively: develop and deliver multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences
• Customer focus: build strong customer relationships and deliver customer-centric solutions
• Drive results: consistently achieve results, even under tough circumstances

Education and Experience...

• Minimum of five years' experience in a business analyst role.
• Must have proven ability to quickly grasp NWEA processes and apply business analyst skills and knowledge in a fast-paced environment, with minimal supervision.
• Understanding of the practice of business analysis and industry standards.
• Pre-existing knowledge of NWEA's core business highly desirable.
• Bachelor's degree in the field of business analysis, accounting, business administration, management information systems or computer science is preferred; or an equivalent combination of education and experience will be considered in lieu of a degree