Business Analyst – Contract Position– HIRING ASAP Location: Hybrid out of the London office Start Date: ASAP Duration: 4-month initial contract Daily Rate: £400 - £500 per day inside IR35 RequirementsExperience working as a business analyst within a project environment, delivering IT enabled changeUnderstanding of the full project delivery life cycle and experience of delivery across different phases of the projectExperience of applying various techniques and delivering analysis outputs, including:Requirements elicitation and documentationBusiness process modellingWorkflow / scenario / use case modellingData and system analysis and documentationExperience in workshop facilitation and conducting stakeholder interviews to extract relevant informationExperience in managing own time effectively in an environment of competing end-user demands and time-critical schedules, prioritising simultaneous project work and rapidly evaluating alternate action plansExperience in working within a similar Higher Education institution or within an Information Services division, preferable knowledge of Recruitment and AdmissionsResponsibilities Stakeholder engagementPlan and run an engagement approach covering central teams, faculties and departments, working with the programme team to identify the right people and the right level of engagement for each group.Run interviews, observation sessions and workshops with faculty and departmental colleagues, including sessions with busy academic and professional services staff, making effective use of their time.Capture and reconcile differing needs and practices between faculties, departments and applicant routes, and bring them together into shared positions that stakeholders can support.Provide clear, regular feedback to stakeholders on what you have heard and how it is being used. Elicit, document and manage requirementsElicit business, user and data requirements using a range of techniques, including workshops, interviews, process walkthroughs, document analysis and prototyping where useful.Write clear, testable requirements with acceptance criteria, at a level of detail suitable for each stage, from high-level needs through to detail suitable for an RFP and supplier evaluation.Apply a structured prioritisation approach (e.g. MoSCoW) with stakeholders, and keep the requirements set right-sized, avoiding both gaps and over-specification.Maintain traceability between processes, capabilities, pain points and requirements, and manage requirements through change control, version history and sign-off.Validate requirements with stakeholders and with delivery, technical and procurement colleagues, and support their use in supplier engagement, demonstrations and evaluation.Identify non-functional, integration, data and compliance requirements, working with ISD, data and information governance colleagues. Review and challenge current ways of workingDocument (or review where already existing) processes and journeys for the main applicant routes (undergraduate, postgraduate taught, postgraduate research, initial teacher education and affiliate), at different levels of detail for different audiences.Identify and quantify pain points, inefficiencies, bottlenecks, manual workarounds, risks and inconsistencies, and their impact on applicants, staff, service performance and compliance.Establish root causes rather than symptoms, and constructively challenge 'the way we've always done it' with evidence, data and examples from elsewhere.Agree and document business domain terminology so that processes, requirements and systems are described consistently across the programme. Redesign processesWork with stakeholders to generate and assess options for improving processes, considering people, process, policy, data and technology impacts.Produce options papers setting out benefits, risks, dependencies, costs and implementation considerations, and support decision-making at programme and senior stakeholder level.Design and document 'to-be' processes, standardising where it adds value and recognising where local variation is justified.Test and refine proposed designs with the people who will use them, through walkthroughs, scenarios and workshops.Identify transition requirements, business change impacts and dependencies, and hand these to the programme's change and delivery colleagues.Keep process and requirements work aligned with the programme's vision, capability model and target operating model, flagging gaps, conflicts or dependencies to the BA Lead and wider programme team. Delivery and governanceWork with the BA Lead, Programme Lead and project team to agree scope, plans and priorities, and own delivery of your work packages within agreed timeframes.Advise on the most suitable analysis methods and level of stakeholder engagement for each piece of work.Manage risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies relating to your work, escalating where necessary.Produce clear, well-structured documentation, visual models (e.g. in Miro) and presentations suited to different audiences, from departmental administrators to senior programme stakeholders.
Nathan Peters