Business Functional Analyst

Ideal Candidate Profile: seeking a Business Functional Analyst to work with both internal staff and external clients to optimize processes and improve quality for the design, development and maintenance of technical assets. It is critical for a functional analyst to understand the operational systems of a client, and what the client requires as changes to their existing systems. The systems analyst must translate those requirements into technical specifications to be used by internal staff to develop the system modifications; diagrams must also be prepared explaining the modifications so that both technical staff and executive management can understand what must be done. The functional analyst must propose alternative solutions that balance cost and benefits and adequately test the possibilities for business and technical compatibility.



Job Duties & Responsibilities
Partner with project team members and business stakeholders to deeply understand business processes, identify pain points, and develop expertise in the customers' business applications.
Conduct thorough root cause analysis to uncover system gaps and deficiencies, proposing effective business, technical, or blended solutions.
Develop process flows, context diagrams, and data flow diagrams to document current processes and propose modifications.
Client and meticulously document requirements and user stories with a focus on improving both business and technical processes.
Decompose requirements into Epics and Features, creating clear and actionable user stories that can be easily understood and implemented by technical teams. Use progressive elaboration to map stories to technical design specifications.
Support the Product Owner in maintaining the product backlog, grouping related user stories into Themes, and documenting dependencies.
Create conceptual prototypes and mock-ups to visualize proposed solutions and enhance stakeholder understanding.
Propose cost-effective solutions, rigorously testing their feasibility for both business and technical compatibility.
Define test objectives, create test plans and cases, execute tests (including regression testing), and facilitate User Acceptance Testing (UAT) with the business. Keep Project Managers and Scrum Masters informed of the progress of testing activities.



Required Skills & Experience
Advanced understanding of enterprise data management concepts and tools.
Minimum of 10 years of experience delivering business and systems analysis artifacts.
5+ years of experience as an Agile Business Analyst with a strong understanding of Scrum concepts and methodology.
Proven experience in organizing and maintaining Product and Sprint backlogs.
Proficiency in translating client and product strategy requirements into application requirements and user stories.
Expertise in defining acceptance criteria and managing the acceptance process with development teams.
Experience with large, multi-module enterprise systems.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, Visio, PowerPoint, Project Server).
Experience with Application Lifecycle Management (ALM).
Exceptional written and oral communication skills, with a proven ability to work well with a diverse set of peers and customers.
Must be proficient in business process management concepts on BPM tools. Strong experience in creating business process models.



Preferred
Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP)
PMI - Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA)
PMI - Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
Experience using Azure DevOps for agile software development and work item tracking.