Specialist: Business Analysis at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

Job Summary

• The Business Analyst facilitates business and cross-competency teams to understand, analyse and document relevant business functions and business requirements in completing tasks related to business solution planning, documenting and managing customer requirements. 
• The work of the BA includes process analysis; business process and requirements modelling and analysis. The role works with business stakeholders, Product Managers, UI/UX Designers, Project Management and technology partners to develop and implement business solutions on digital platforms in an agile environment.

Job Description

The Business Analyst is accountable for 

• Gathering requirements from business.
• Creating enabling documentation (Business Requirement Definition, User stories and user acceptance criteria. Defining a functional solution in accordance with the organizational needs.
• Tracking the requirements throughout the life cycle of the project.
• Translating requirements into the foundation of the User Acceptance Criteria, and working through to UAT completion and implementation.
• Providing inputs to partners during the project lifecycle (Reviewing Technical Solution Specification prepared by System Analyst and development team).
• Plan & Organise
• Prepare for requirements elicitation, conduct elicitation activities, document and confirm elicitation results
• As part of requirements analysis:
• Organise and prioritise requirements
• Specify and model requirements using organization’s methodology
• Determine assumptions and constraints
• Verify requirement for correctness and validating that they satisfy the business need
• Assess and validate proposed solutions to determine which solution fits the need.
• Validating that the verified and deployed solution meets the need.
• Work with business leaders in identifying and bringing strategic initiatives from concept to implementation.
• Ensure adequate sign off following the defined governance processes.
• Work with project leads in the planning of BA activities that are required to define the solution to a business problem including scope of work, deliverables, determine tasks and interdependencies between tasks and corresponding Business Analysis efforts, quality of the solution, consistency of BA work products and BA performance metrics for multiple projects. Plan requirements management in terms of documentation, tracing, prioritizing, creating baseline, change management etc.
• Conduct stakeholder analysis to determine appropriate stakeholders for the project or project phase and analyse stakeholder.
• Prepare a Business Analysis communication plan detailing the items for communication, the recipients, mode of communication and frequency.
• Define solution scope.
• Determine organizational readiness effectively to operate the new solution.
• Identify and communicate risk and issues that may require changes to plans and scope.
• Support the junior BAs in drafting requirements and user stories, specifications and other relevant artifacts.
• Plan and coach for adoption of new business analysis techniques and tools.
• Delivery & Support

Create requirements package

• Communicate with solution team to assure that requirements are correctly understood and implemented
• As part of requirements traceability management:
• Trace requirements (Update and maintain relationships between requirements components)              
• Perform impact analysis when changes are requested and supply this information to the change control process
• Facilitate ongoing use of requirements for impact analysis and solution maintenance.
• Facilitate reuse of requirements on related projects to encourage enterprise consistency of business models.
• Contributing to the documentation of Test Plans and work in partnership with testers to coordinate testing effort throughout its life.
• Identify, document and analyse business risk.
• Provide Implementation support by creating user documentation (e.g., manuals, training documentation, release notes).
• Support project initiation phase in eliciting high level requirements.
• Conduct Business Analysis life cycle activities for complex
• Collaborate with Product manager and project management on the planning and estimating of BA activities.
• Facilitate workshops and brainstorming sessions during requirements development phases
• Provide advisory input during initial concept phases of required solutions.
• Manage solutions and requirements scope by creating a baseline, and managing formal and informal change control on requirements.
• Coach and mentor New and Junior Business analysts.

Monitor & Evaluate 

• Utilise ABSA Tools
• Review test scenarios and test cases
• Provide necessary inputs to the testing team.
• Conduct UAT if required at times
• Plan, monitor and Report on Business Analysis performance.
• Ensure that requirements and models meet the needed quality to effectively guide further work
• Ensures that all requirements support the delivery of business value, fulfil goals and objectives, and meets a stakeholder need.
• Improve business analysis performance by taking preventative and corrective action.
• Monitor the business sector, industry, technology, infrastructure, legal and regulatory environment trends for assessing impact on the current business.
• Evaluate trends and analyse adoption of new processes and tools in business analysis.

Education and Experience Required 

• Degree or Diploma in computer science, commerce or business administration, compulsory.
• Certificate of Competency in Business Analysis (CCBA) or Knowledge of BABOK, advantageous.
• Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) certification, advantageous.
• Banking domain experience, compulsory.
• Minimum of 4 years’ Business Analysis experience.
• Minimum of 4 years’ Coaching and mentoring experience
• Minimum of 4 years’ experience in working in a multi discipline team fostering collaboration and team work.
• Experience in Business Analysis.
• Experience and Knowledge of Banking and Financial Services business.
• Experience in Stakeholder Management.
• Experience in Agile ways of work and user story writing is compulsory

Knowledge & Skills:

• Banking knowledge, compulsory.
• Results orientation
• Good written and oral communication skills
• Good Listener
• Strong analytical and problem solving skills, giving attention to detail
• Team player – approachable, ability to share and consult others
• The ability to adapt to the requirements of the project, the needs of the sponsors, its environment and people working on it to ensure a successful outcome
• Good organizing capability
• Ability to apply analytical rigor to understand complex business scenarios
• Ability to propose ideas, practices and methods and, in particular give equal weight to the various disciplines involved on the project.
• Strong facilitation, negotiation and conflict resolution skills
• People management, mentoring and training skills Competencies: (Maximum of 8 competencies) 

Analysing

• Delivering Results & meeting customer expectations
• Presenting & Communicating Information
• Learning & Research
• Coping with pressure & setbacks
• Working with people

Education

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