Description

Sr Business Analyst (temporary)

NWEA is seeking a Senior Business Analyst with 5+ years of experience for long-term project work. This is a contract position with assignment duration of 6 to 12 months, with possibility for assignment extension. Location: NWEA's downtown Portland headquarters. For this role, we will consider candidates who currently reside in the Portland metro area.
Position summary

The Senior Business Analyst (Sr. BA) 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 abilities

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 skills

• 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 audience.

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 apps

• 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.

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 two years' education and seven years' of experience will be considered in lieu of a degree

NWEA strives to make diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) practices the center of our work. Our organization's mission, Partnering to Help All Kids Learn, is the foundation for our DEIA commitment as we work to reflect, value, and support the educators, students, colleagues, and communities we serve. We seek to empower and engage all stakeholders in the research, services, solutions and products we provide, our organizational culture, and the partnerships we establish with schools, districts, states, and countries.

NWEA endeavors to make www.nwea.org accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process, please call us at (503) 624-1951 or e-mail us at onlineaccommodations@nwea.org and let us know the nature of your request, your location and your contact information. This is for accommodation requests only and cannot be used to inquire about the status of applications.

NWEA™ is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. For our EEO Policy Statement, please click here. If you'd like more information on your EEO rights under the law, please click here