Solution Designer at Kerridge Commercial Systems South Africa

At KCS the primary role of the Solution Designer is to support the Product and Project Management teams to define larger customer scope and requirements.  The Solution Designer takes responsibility for the scope, requirements, success criteria and expected outcome definition for customer specific development requests.  The Solution Designer will work with the customer through the delivery of the requirement from requirement sign-off, final review and sign off of the development of the requirement to user acceptance testing sign-off.  The Solution Designer is responsible for handing over the customer development to support to ensure after delivery support efficiency. 

Key Responsibilities: 

High level requirement analysis: 

• Collaborates with Business Stakeholders and Product Management to assess the feasibility of the development in alignment with other development requests and product priorities
• Facilitates workshops to analyse and document customer specific development requirements
• Documents high level requirements by using appropriate methodologies (process flow diagrams, data flow diagrams, use case diagrams etc.)
• Works with Product Development teams to accurately estimate effort required to deliver the requirement to the customer
• Communicates time and effort estimates to the Project Manager / Customer Stakeholder 

Requirement documentation: 

• Documents requirements following standard processes and procedures (workflow and data diagrams, conditions, flow of events, exception criteria, acceptance criteria, expected outcomes) in such a format that developers can easily follow what the customer is looking for
• Validates and achieves sign-off from customers for specific development requests before the item is added to the priority list
• Captures requirements in JIRA in the right format and with the appropriate supporting documentation and information required 

Requirement decomposition and review: 

• Decomposes features and epics in such a way that development efforts can be easily estimated and scope can be added to JIRA.
• Hands over the development requests to the Delivery Manager for development and participates in Sprint Planning sessions to assist with Story Decomposition and prioritisation of customer backlog items
• Attends sprint reviews to track the progress of development to be delivered to customers and provides feedback to the customer or project manager on progress or issues during the development cycle which may impact scope or delivery date expectations.
• Completes a final review of the development against the requirements and gives the “Go-Ahead” for release 

Internal and External Customer engagement: 

• Facilitates customer UAT workshops by defining UAT criteria, transferring knowledge to the customer and tracking the success of the UAT
• Achieves sign off on the delivered development 
• Hands over the development to the Support Team by providing supporting documentation and or training on the customer specific development item 

Key Requirements: 

Experience & Knowledge: 

• Experience in working with different senior level business, partner and customer stakeholders to solicit what they are trying to achieve and the commercial benefits any solution will bring to all parties
• Experience in facilitating customer workshops, analysing and documenting customer requirements and engaging with senior stakeholders to build a collaborative and trust culture
• Experience and knowledge of ERP product use cases and ERP project rollouts for medium to large enterprises
• Experience in working with Agile delivery and business teams in ERP software development companies (e.g. Scrum or Kanban etc.)
• Experience in the decomposition of requirements (Feature to Epic to Stories), story pointing, backlog grooming and sprint rituals to successfully participate where required as part of the delivery of the requirement
• Experience in facilitating knowledge transfer and user acceptance testing workshops with customers 
• Experience in writing product documentation to support knowledge transfer to internal and external stakeholders 

Skills & Competencies: 

• The ability to solve problems and take decisive action within a highly complex ecosystem and within a global context
• The ability to facilitate and clearly document and communicate product requirements effectively to all levels of business, delivery and customer stakeholders 
• The ability to build and maintain strong and trusted relationships with all levels of business, delivery and customers stakeholders 
• The ability to present objectively with authority and confidence to senior levels of business, delivery and customer stakeholders
• The ability to adapt to change in any periods of change/disruption
• The ability to accurately prioritise, organise and plan their work and to seek continuous improvement to drive efficiencies in their product space 

Key KCS behaviours:  

• Must have a pro-active, positive, open and collaborative approach to working with others in a team
• Must be open to learning new skills and self-development to drive both personal and team growth
• Must be comfortable in giving feedback at all levels with integrity as well as receiving it to build trust