Job Description

To function at a proficient level as a liaison among stakeholders to elicit, investigate, analyse, understand, document, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies, information and information systems in the context of business challenges and opportunities and to recommend solutions that enable the DBSA (Development Bank of Southern Africa) to achieve its goals as a DFI (Development Finance Institution).

Key Responsibilities

Business Analysis

• Develops a business analysis work-plan to manage own and team activities, tasks, deliverables and schedule
• Select appropriate business analysis approach
• Evaluates project complexity, assumptions, constraints and dependencies
• Plans requirements approval and change
• Measures and tracks quality of business analysis work and reports on business analysis measurements
• Improves business analysis performance by taking preventative and corrective action
• Complies with and upholds organizational standards
• Responds to changing organizational priorities
• Ensures that the collected information links to business objectives and is broken down into measureable
  requirements
• Obtains the required approvals on solutions through the capturing of accurate, minimum base requirements and consistently obtains timely stakeholder requirements sign-off
• Manages changes to requirements in a consistent manner.
• Systematically organises and traces requirements from business case through to implemented solution by the
  development and maintenance of the correct traceability level linked to the work effort and expected quality
• Leverages the uses of traceability to enable impact analysis, manage requirements risk and change
• Identifies and maintains requirements for reuse through accurate assessment of requirements that will add
  value to the organisation
• Allocates stakeholder and solution requirements among solution components to maximise business value by
  assessing trade-offs between options to maximise benefits and minimise cost

Stakeholder management

• Clearly expresses stakeholder desires and/or current organisational state using a combination of textual
  formats, models, diagrams and matrices
• Identifies all stakeholders and determines stakeholder influence and relationship needs
• Builds and manages stakeholder (internal and external) relationships.
• Relationships with stakeholders include: Business partners, users, vendors, customers, project team members
  and management leaders
• Consistently ensures that requirements are ready for review by stakeholders
• Develops effective communication plan to meet project and stakeholder needs
• Identifies and communicates risks and issues that may require changes to plans or scope
• Ensures appropriate stakeholder's involvement in information gathering activities
• Obtains (elicits) required information from stakeholders to design solutions
• Captures information provided in requirements discovery sessions in a manner that stakeholders understand
  and can review and validate
• Accurately translates stakeholder information into solution requirements
• Validates stakeholder requirements to ensure it matches intended stakeholder needs
• Manages conflicts and issues to resolution by maintaining consensus among stakeholders on the solution scope and accurately recognises when an issue is a requirements or project issue and escalates appropriately
• Prepares and presents requirements in an understandable and appropriate format and confirms that
  stakeholders have a shared understanding of requirements

Requirements validation and analysis

• Assesses the impact on any requirements changes to understand the impact as well as the cost/benefit and risk analysis of the change.
• Differentiates between strategic and tactical business needs and goals to define achievable objectives and
  measures
• Understands overall business architecture, structure, strategy capability gaps, organisational culture, structure
  and impact on work efforts
• Facilitates, with strategic guidance, stakeholder idea generation and accurately identifies alternative solutions,
  assumption and constraints
• Describes, with strategic guidance, and selects a solution approach from a number of different options and assesses the organisation's readiness for the proposed approach
• Defines, with strategic guidance, the new organisational capabilities that the project, iteration or work effort will deliver
• Determines justification for investing into the proposed solution by collaboratively defining benefits and
  appropriate success measures
• Prepares a decision package to effectively present the required solution to facilitate a decision to invest and
  move forward with the proposed solution
• Prioritises requirements effectively based on factors including business value, cost to deliver and time
  constraints and builds stakeholder consensus on requirements prioritisation to ensure analysis and
  implementation focus on critical requirements

Information management

• Organises and synthesises large amounts of information provided by stakeholders in understandable views
  and clearly articulates the relationships between the various requirements and stakeholder needs.
• Ensures that information captured in different models is consistent and accurate
• Facilitates requirements for transition of data, requirements for the transition of 'work in progress", requirements for needed training and facilitates discussions on operational change needs due to new solution being in place
• Develops acceptance criteria and a plan to evaluate the solutions
• Facilitates acceptance of the solution and accurately ensures that the solution performs to meet the business
  requirements
• Effectively communicates solution impact to stakeholders.

Business Analysis Models

• Consistently leverages models and specifications to provide insight into opportunities for improvement
• Effectively uses models as a tool to document requirements and also a tool to aid in elicitation activities
• Effectively uses formal and informal modeling as appropriate to the audience
• Accurately identifies and confirms assumptions and constraints
• Accurately assesses the quality and characteristics of requirements (cohesive, complete, consistent, correct,
  feasible, modifiable, unambiguous and testable)
• Iteratively checks work in progress for quality attributes
• Ensures that all requirements support the delivery of business value, fulfils goals and objectives, and meet stakeholder's needs
• Assesses solution proposals and demonstrate which proposal will be most effective
• Demonstrates understanding of the changes that will occur with the new solution (business area, technical
  infrastructure, processes and operations)
• Accurately assesses stakeholder beliefs, attitudes and willingness to adapt to new solution
• Demonstrates understanding of the forces that support and oppose the change and works to strengthen
  support
• Assesses the effect and impact a defect or issue has on the business value of the solution
• Effectively prioritises defects and issues with the solution
• Effectively evaluates defects and issues for potential workarounds that are acceptable until they can be
  addressed
• Proactively investigates how a solution is actually used after it is deployed and actively seeks to identify how
  the users have adapted and/or modified the solution and why
• Validates the previously defined performance metrics for the solution
• Effectively communicates to stakeholders how the solution is performing in relationship to the business goals and objectives

Key Measures/KPI's

• Effectively manage plan and initiate business analysis processes
• Able to gather business requirements
• Able to prepare and communicate business requirements
• Able to conduct enterprise analysis
• Able to conduct solution assessment and validation

Expertise & Technical Competencies

Minimum Requirements

• Degree in Information Technology or any relevant degree
• Minimum 5 years' experience as a Business Analyst
• Professional Diploma in Business Analysis or Certification of Competency in Business Analysis (CCBA)Project
  management qualification
• Process and Systems Methodology Fundamentals (e.g. SDLC, RAD, 8 Omega (DADVIICI, etc.)
• Understanding data modelling and database design fundamentals
• Understanding Information Systems Fundamentals
• Test and Requirements Management Fundamentals
• Writing of BRS (Business Requirements Specifications)
• Writing of FS (Functional Requirements Specifications)
• Advanced experience in planning and executing UAT (User Acceptance Testing) and RT (Regression Testing)
• Multiple focus on projects, processes, systems or business areas linking effort to business value
• Advanced business, product and services knowledge
• Awareness of technologies ( ARIS, SAP, Microsoft Applications)

Skills & Ability

• Experience in and understanding of business principles and fundamentals
• Advanced knowledge and understanding of business process and software applications fundamentals
• Experience in business and data modeling
• Experience in dealing with multiple process and systems methodology application
• Experience in Project Management
• Thorough understanding of data principles and applications
• Excellent communication, analytical and problem solving skills with an eye to visualize and design for the
  future
• Experience in multiple business area and systems focus with strategic business and industry awareness
  limited to areas of experience
• Thorough understanding of business processes and technologies impact within the organisation
• Ability to interact with various specialists internally or externally to drive continuous improvement and
  innovation
• Advanced report writing skills (Process reports, specifications and executive summaries

TECHNICAL COMPETENCIES Planning & Organizing

• Is relied on to help others plan and organise their workload.
• Effectively uses advanced time management processes to deal with high workload and tight deadlines.
• Organises, prioritises and schedules tasks so they can be performed within budget and with the efficient use of
  time and resources.
• Achieves goals in a timely manner, despite obstacles encountered, by organising, reprioritising and re-planning

Negotiation Skills

• Understands and can apply basic negotiating skills and techniques, e.g. obtaining a full understanding of the
  other party's agenda and needs before disclosing own perspectives.
• Possesses an understanding of various unspoken communications from other parties and can decipher hidden
  agendas.
• Is able to successfully conclude negotiations which require the development of an emotional as well as factual
  argument.
• Is able to develop mutually-beneficial potential solutions.

Written Communication

• Understands that different writing styles are required for different documents or audiences.
• Write effective correspondence, prepares questions and reports, statements of circumstance and briefing notes.
• Reviews others' documents for clarity and impact.
• Has a solid mastery of writing principles such as grammar, sentence construction etc.

Required Personal Attributes

BEHAVIOURAL COMPETENCIES Customer Service Orientation

• Tries to understand the underlying needs of customers and matches these needs to available or customized
  products and services.
• Adapts processes and procedures to meet on-going customer needs.
• Utilises the feedback received by customers, in order to develop new and/or improve existing services/ products that relate to their on-going needs.
• Thinks of new ways to align DBSA's offerings with future customer needs

Self-awareness and Self Control

• Withholds effects of strong emotions in difficult situations.
• Keeps functioning or responds constructively despite stress.
• May apply special techniques or plan ahead of time to manage emotions or stress.

Strategic and Innovative Thinking

• Experiments with new approaches, tests scenarios, questions assumptions and challenges conventional
  thinking.
• Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others, leveraging internal and external sources of information, to build incremental revenue and growth opportunities.

Driving delivery of results

• Sets challenging goals that will have a significant impact on the business or support the organisational strategy.
• Commits significant resources and/or time to ensure that challenging goals are achieved, while also taking action to mitigate risk.

Teamwork & Cooperation

• Acts to promote a friendly climate and good morale, and resolves conflicts.
• Creates opportunities for cross-functional working.
• Encourages others to network outside of their own team/department and learn from their experience.