Senior Business Analyst

Job Description

• Responsible for performing moderately complex, cross functional and cross company business and process analysis.
• Scope of work includes creating and facilitating user acceptance test program, understanding of business analysis techniques needed to effectively and efficiently analyze enterprise-wide systems, extracts and interfaces.
• Has a good understanding of the interrelationships between systems and processes with those of the overall enterprise and can identify some possible impacts as a result of more complex changes.
• Uses understanding of enterprise systems relationships to assess process and systems improvements to ensure alignment of current needs with desired future direction.
• Demonstrated understanding of Symetra s business and systems domains as well as the industry in which we operate.

Responsibilities

Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring:

• Stakeholder identification, selection of business analysis techniques, process that will be used to manage requirements, and how to access the progress of the work.
• Evaluates project complexity of all domains (Business, IT, Vendor)
• Builds relationships with business partners including users, vendors, project team and management at all levels.
• Develops a communication plan to meet the needs of all business partners and can adapt communication style to different audiences.
• Utilizes some advanced techniques to measure quality of business analysis and can implement appropriate change based on the metrics.

User Acceptance:

• Develop acceptance criteria to ensure business needs are met.
• Create and maintain UAT program for core system capabilities and integrations.
• Facilitate user acceptance testing for large to complex projects including reporting out on test metrics test backlog burn down, defects, blockers to testing, etc.
• When appropriate, utilize automation tools to ensure quality and efficiency in testing.
• Analyze and document test plans, test cases and results.

Requirements Management and Communications:

• Manages changes to requirements and assesses impact to scope of moderate to complex projects.
• Manage conflicts and collaborates with project team and stakeholders to gain consensus.
• Develops and maintains traceability of the requirements from planning through post-production phases of projects to ensure quality of delivery.
• Has a good understanding of reuse standards and can help develop and apply new standards for maintaining analysis artifacts.
• Creates comprehensive requirements artifacts at the level of details to support development of solution.
• Facilitates reviews of requirements using formal and informal techniques for large projects.

Process Analysis:

• As related to creating and facilitating testing, utilize process modeling tools and techniques in order to identify and breakdown phases of a process in order to create an understanding of the inputs, outputs, and operations that take place during each phase.
• Create modeling diagrams, for larger projects, that help define the requirements, identify gaps in requirements and workflows.

Skills and Abilities Required

Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving

• Ability to take moderately complex abstract and ambiguous information and organize into meaningful facts for business partners to understand.
• Understanding how a system change affects the whole system itself and all downstream systems, interfaces, workflow and processes.
• Ability to contribute to new ideas and applying these to resolve existing problems or needs.
• Ability to solve more complex issues, to ensure that the solutions meet the objectives of the business partners.
• Business Knowledge Strong understanding of business environment, operations, process and practices relating to: complex business functions and operations, organization structure, regulatory, compliance and governance frameworks.
• Product knowledge within the company as well as in the industry.
• Good understanding of how products are supported by multiple systems and how changes in the product impact those systems. Excellent documentation skills to build vision and scope, BRS, UAT, Communication plans, Training plans and presentations.
• Strong Initiative/program management skills deploying IT systems implementations within the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) with an ability to manage and deliver multiple Initiatives or releases at the same time. Communication Skills
• Excellent oral and written communication skills with the ability to adjust according to the audience.
• Ability to facilitate large and small group sessions ensuring success through preparation and attention to detail.
• Verifies information communicated is understood and the person(s) receiving the information can apply what they have heard. Interaction Skills
• Ability to lead and influence team members and begins to expand their influence to others outside the department.
• Fosters a collaborative working environment and builds trust within the team as well as others outside the department. System and Software
• Ability to analyze and apply understanding of software applications to improve business analysis tasks and techniques.
• Strong understanding of how systems, interfaces, extracts and processes interact with one another and can apply knowledge to analysis.
• Ability to look holistically across all systems, interfaces, extracts and processes to determine feasibility of needs and solutions.

Education/Experience/License/Training/Skills PREFERRED

• Insurance or financial services industry background
• 5-7 years experience as a business analyst
• IIBA or PMI certifications in business analysis or project management

Typical Years of Experience

• 5-8 years of cumulative, relevant experience