Business Analyst

The Business Analyst's role is to elicit, analyze, specify, and validate the business needs of stakeholders, be they customers or end users. This includes interviewing stakeholders and gathering and compiling user requirements to understand the technology and business process solutions they need. The Business Analyst will also apply proven communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills to help the business make good technology decisions. The Business Analyst will also be proactive about working with the Software Development Group and other IT teams to look for new technologies to optimize business processes. The Business Analyst will play a pivotal role in ensuring IT's understanding of business requirements.

Specific Duties Include:

• Discover and fully comprehend business process and the goals of the process.
• Seek ways to improve the business process.
• Seek ways to use automation to facilitate, enforce, or replace business tasks.
• Conduct interviews to gather user requirements via workshops, questionnaires, surveys, site visits, workflow storyboards, use cases, scenarios, and other methods.
• Collaborate with project sponsors to determine project scope and vision.
• Interact with the software development group, project management, and product support to become an integral part of the team.
• Determine potential solutions and create recommendations based upon research and analysis. Communicate proposed ideas to user groups and senior management.
• Communicate planned improvements to software development group and work with users and development to bring improvements to fruition.
• Source and vet potential technology vendors to determine if their solution meets user group or organization needs.
• Maintain document library of business process and planned changes.
• Work within an iterative agile environment and help to evangelize that methodology to the business.
• Assist leadership in making informed technology decisions by presenting facts and recommendations where necessary.
• Assist in conducting research on software and hardware products to meet agreed upon requirements and to support purchasing efforts.
• Research, review, and analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of existing requirements-gathering processes and develop strategies for enhancing or further leveraging these processes.
• Translate conceptual user requirements into functional requirements in a clear manner that is comprehensible to the developers/project team.
• Create process models, specifications, diagrams, and charts to provide direction to developers and/or the project team.
• Provide an interpretation of user requirements into feasible options, and communicating these back to the business stakeholders.
• Manage and track the status of requirements throughout the project lifecycle; enforce and redefine as necessary.
• Communicate changes, enhancements, and modifications of business requirements- verbally or through written documentation - to project managers, sponsors, and other stakeholders so that issues and solutions are understood.
• Participate in daily developer huddles - often taking the role of product owner.
• Participate in weekly sprint meetings - often taking the role of product owner.
• Provide guidance and/or instruction to junior staff members.

Job Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Computer Science or Engineering
• 2-5 years' of IT experience, including business analysis and quality assurance
• Proven experience with business and technical requirements analysis, elicitation, modeling, verification, and methodology development

• Experience overseeing the design, development, and implementation of software and hardware solutions, systems, or products
• Ability to create systematic and consistent requirements specifications in both technical and user-friendly language
• Exceptional analytical and statistical skills with the ability to apply them to systems issues and products as required
• Understanding of application development and software development life cycle concepts
• Able to exercise independent judgment and take action on it
• Excellent analytical, mathematical, and creative problem-solving skills
• Excellent listening, interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills
• Highly self-motivated and directed
• Ability to work within loosely defined operational processes while continually improving those processes
• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks while under pressure
• Experience working in an iterative agile environment preferred