Business Analyst at Absa South Africa

Job Description

Accountability: Project Establishment Initiation Activitie

• Develop design principles based on the initial brief and scope provided by the Project Owner, Business Sponsor and Project Manager.
• Support the Sponsor/Project Owner in their efforts to guide the project's implementation activities, including the requirements planning stage.
• Assist business areas impacted by projects and changes with the writing and/or updating of circulars and manuals, when changes to operational policies, procedures and processes occur.
• Build and maintain relationships with line role players by communicating regularly and working closely with them to elicit business requirements, evaluate and recommend possible business solutions, make assessments and produce feasibility analysis.
• Identify project risks either by consultation with key stakeholders and/or a risk assessment workshop and develop mitigating action plans in agreement with the project Sponsor/Project Owner/Project Manager (PM), thereafter document such risks and actions in the project risk register for on-going monitoring.
• Assist the PM with ensuring that the definition of the project scope and all other documentation needed in the Project Concept and/or Project Charter document/s is obtained by facilitating a project definition workshop.
• Develop hypotheses to achieve project goals based on the outcomes of the project definition workshop and use these to guide the fact gathering and analysis.
• Ensure all the business requirements, evaluations and recommendations of possible business solutions, assessments and feasibility analysis are documented, circulated and signed off by the relevant stakeholders and handed over to the PM for use in defining and designing the project.
• Assist the PM by providing advice, investigating, estimating and calculating costs, timelines, resources and plans for the composition and approval of the project stage business cases.
• Facilitate workshops in conjunction with the PM in order to obtain business user requirements in terms of the proposed end state of the project so that the project is suitably defined, designed and implemented.
• Identify project milestones based on the high level project plan and prepare planning estimates in terms of timelines, resources, design, etc. for the project.  Project manage a sub-project or work stream, when required to do so by the PM.
• Assist the Project Manager (PM) to generate weekly/monthly or adhoc status reports, using input from project teams for reporting to Project Office/Sector Change Council for the purpose on reporting progress on the project in terms of work completed/still to be done, risks, issues, plans, etc.

Accountability: Requirements Definition

• Analyse the “as is” “business architectures”, to identify any issues, opportunities, etc. This includes the analysis of existing products & services, the procedures and business rules, the organisation structures, functions, roles & responsibilities, the business processes & procedures, the IT systems functionalities, performance and measurement metrics.
• Investigate and perform a business needs analysis, by interviewing the product or business process owners, to determine business requirements and identify possible alternatives and or solutions to achieve these requirements.
• Perform a “root cause” issues analysis with key stakeholders by either conducting interviews or workshop to further evaluate and identify solutions and/or alternatives to meet the business requirements and document all findings to assist with project definition, design and build.
• Assist the PM to set up and facilitate workshops with relevant stakeholders to gather, identify and document the project and business owner requirements to be used in the project definition, design and build.
• Investigate options available, best practices, alternatives etc. and obtain up to date information in relation to the project requirements / objectives by referring to internal and external parties to ensure the best solution is considered and identified for the project.

Accountability: Solution Analysis and Design Activities

• Design the “to be” business architectures by using the identified design principles and document the ideas by working through increasing levels of design detail (i.e. conceptual/high level/detailed design levels).
• Identify and design new and/or improved business process systems and/or procedures to deliver project goals by ensuring that the best solution is considered and identified for the project.
• Undertake a feasibility and impact analysis of solutions identified (people, process, system infrastructure) with key stakeholders, internal, external and technology staff to further define project requirements for the definition, design and build of the project. Call for support from IT solution design teams where technical designs are required.
• Identify IT interfaces and IT integration points to ensure integrated functional specifications, by consulting and work shopping with the IT System Analysis teams, Group Strategy, Enterprise Architect, Vendors, etc.
• Develop IT-systems functional, non-functional and service level requirements, Business Requirement Definition documents (BRDs), use cases, etc. based on the evaluations, meetings, assessments and requirements analysis undertaken during the earlier stages of the project analysis stages, for use by the PM and project team to design, build, test and implement the project.
• Develop a functional decomposition of identified requirements through consultation with stakeholders to ensure that the business requirements will be developed and delivered by the project.
• Validate documented solutions in a walk-through workshop with stakeholders and compare the Absa architectures to ensure the solution is compliant in terms of required standards, design and fit to the Enterprise Architecture. Accountability: Assessment and Validation of Solutions Activities.
• Assist the systems-management function with setting up and undertaking the IT systems user-acceptance tests by both business users and IT staff to ensure that the technology solution meets the business requirements.
• If required, co-ordinate user acceptance testing with regard to securing test users, the test location, the relevant access rights and by documenting all results and where required perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT) as undertaken and stipulated by the Technology methodology.
• Assess the solution/s by bench-marking with Industry and within Absa to ensure the solution is compliant in terms of required standards, design and fit to the Enterprise Architecture.
• Evaluate the vendors' products/solutions and the integration capability of the products / solutions with Absa to ensure the solution is compliant in terms of required standards, design and fit to the Enterprise Architecture.
• Perform all other duties as reasonably assigned.

Education

• Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Physical, Mathematical, Computer and Life Sciences (Required)