Business Analyst

Job Title: Business Analyst


Location: Irving, TX (Day 1 Onsite)


Job Type: Contract

Job Description

The Business Analyst's role is to elicit, analyze, specify, and validate the business needs of stakeholders, be they customers or end users. This includes interviewing stakeholders and gathering and compiling user requirements to understand the technology solutions they need. The Business Analyst will apply proven communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills to help the business make good technology decisions. The Business Analyst will also be proactive about working with the Emerging Technology Analyst to look for new technologies to optimize business processes. The Business Analyst will play a pivotal role in ensuring IT's understanding of business requirements.

Responsibilities

Strategy & Planning

• Collaborate with project sponsors to determine project scope and vision.
• Clearly identify project stakeholders and establish user classes, as well as their characteristics.
• Conduct interviews to gather user requirements via workshops, questionnaires, surveys, site visits, workflow storyboards, use cases, scenarios, and other methods.
• Identify and establish scope and parameters of requirements analysis on a project-by-project basis to define project impact, outcome criteria, and metrics.
• Work with stakeholders and project team to prioritize collected requirements.
• Research, review, and analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of existing requirements-gathering processes and develop strategies for enhancing or further leveraging these processes.

Acquisition & Deployment

• Assist in conducting research on software and hardware products to meet agreed-upon requirements and to support purchasing efforts.
• Participate in the QA of purchased solutions to ensure features and functions have been enabled and optimized.
• Participate in the selection of any requirements documentation software solutions that the organization may opt to use.

Operational Management

• Analyze and verify requirements for completeness, consistency, comprehensibility, feasibility, and conformity to standards.
• Develop and utilize standard templates to accurately and concisely write requirements specifications.
• Translate conceptual user requirements into functional requirements in a clear manner that is comprehensible to developers/project team.
• Where applicable, develop prototypes of interfaces and attributes based on user requirements.
• Create process models, specifications, diagrams, and charts to provide direction to developers and/or the project team.
• Develop and conduct peer reviews of business requirements to ensure that requirement specifications are correctly interpreted.
• Assist with the interpretation of user requirements into feasible options and communicate these back to the business stakeholders.
• Manage and track the status of requirements throughout the project lifecycle; enforce and redefine as necessary.
• Communicate changes, enhancements, and modifications of business requirements - verbally or through written documentation - to project managers, sponsors, and other stakeholders so that issues and solutions are understood.
• Provide guidance and/or instruction to junior staff members.

Position Requirements

Formal Education & Certification

• College diploma or university degree in the field of business administration, computer science, finance, or information systems
• Three to five years' related work experience

Knowledge & Experience

• Demonstrated knowledge of the organization's core business process and operations
• Proven experience with business and technical requirements analysis, elicitation, modeling, verification, and methodology development
• Experience overseeing the design, development, and implementation of software and hardware solutions, systems, or products
• Ability to create systematic and consistent requirements specifications in both technical and user-friendly language
• Exceptional analytical and statistical skills with the ability to apply them to systems issues and products as required
• Clear understanding of product management and market placement
• Demonstrated project management skills and project management software skills, including planning, organizing, and managing resources
• Understanding of application development and software development life cycle concepts
• Working technical knowledge of programming languages including [if relevant, list the languages used in your organization; otherwise, delete this bullet point]
• Working knowledge of network and PC operating systems, including [list the network and operating systems used in your organization]
• Working knowledge of current network hardware, protocols, and standards
• Extensive experience with the organization's core software applications, including [list the organization's core software applications]
• Excellent understanding of the organization's goals and objectives

Personal Attributes

• Able to exercise independent judgment and take action on it
• Excellent analytical, mathematical, and creative problem-solving skills
• Excellent listening, interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills
• Logical and efficient, with keen attention to detail
• Highly self-motivated and directed
• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks while under pressure
• Strong customer service orientation
• Experience working in a team-oriented, collaborative environment

Work Conditions

• Occasional evening and weekend work to meet deadlines
• Sitting for extended periods of time
• Dexterity of hands and fingers required to operate a computer keyboard or mouse and to handle other computer components
• Lifting and transporting of moderately heavy objects, such as computers and peripherals