Business Analyst Projects (Everyday Banking: Change - Card & Payments) at Absa

The purpose of the role is to be responsible for working with Barclays Africa’s business areas to identify, investigate and analyse problems faced by business/product owners. Based on the analysis the Business Analyst needs to propose a solution, to fully address the business requirements needed to optimize the business.

Job Description
Key Accountabilities
Accountability: Project Establishment Initiation Activities

• 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 and assist the Product Owner and Project Manager in the management of change requests.
• Provide input to the business areas impacted by projects and changes about 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.
• Receive the necessary information for allocated projects from the PM, including the Concept and project scope. Assist in ensuring that the definition of the project scope and all other documentation needed in the Project Concept and/or Project Charter document/s is aligned by facilitating a project definition workshop with the Product Owner and other Stakeholders.
• 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 and IT for use in defining and designing the project.
• Assist the PM by providing advice, investigating, as well as, timelines and plans for the Project.
• 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.
• Project manage a sub-project or work stream, when required to do so by the PM.
• Assist the Project Manager (PM) to provide information, when required, in order for the 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.
• Provide and update UAT reports on a Daily, weekly and monthly basis during UAT testing periods and provide the information to the PMs.

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, and 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.
• Design and provide 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.
• Provide a functional decomposition of identified requirements through consultation with stakeholders to ensure that the business requirements be developed and delivered by the project.
• Validate documented solutions in a walk-through workshop with stakeholders, 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

• Review the systems-management function results, after the IT systems integration testing (SIT) by IT staff, to ensure that the technology solution meets the business requirements.
• Compile Test Plans and Test cases for User Acceptance Testing.
• Co-ordinate user acceptance testing with regard to requesting for securing and contracting User testers with the Product Owner and Product Manager, identifying the test location, arranging the relevant access rights, conducting and co-ordinating the UAT testing where applicable, and by documenting all results and where required perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT) as undertaken and stipulated by the Africa Technology methodology.
• Assess the solution/s by benchmarking with Industry and 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 And Experience Required

• Relevant National Diploma/Advance diploma or equivalent NQF level 6 qualification
• Relevant NQF level 7 or higher is preferred
• At least 3 years work experience in the Financial Industry would be advantageous
• 3 - 10 years business analysis/business consulting experience
• Solid knowledge & understanding of Project principles, practices, disciplines specifically the contents of Business Analysis Book of Knowledge (BABOK)
• Previous direct involvement in business-change projects would be advantageous

Education

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