SUMMARY:

• A Senior Business Analyst adept at eliciting and documenting complex business requirements and facilitating the implementation of major business and IT change for blue chip companies. Key strengths include: stakeholder management, offshore delivery management, capturing user stories and acceptance criteria; communicating with cross functional teams (of developers, testers, UI/UX, SMEs); utilising commercial acumen in alignment with IT expertise to translate organisational aims into complex technical requirements; forging strong stakeholder relationships with directors to business users to minimise the risk of misaligned expectations and ensure deliverables match commercial objectives; facilitating requirements workshops; wire - framing ; mapping out and scrutinising the value of processes and workflows; highlighting issues and areas of improvement to mitigate potential delays and facilitate rapid delivery; and bridging the divide between business and technical teams to ensure creation of systems which realise business value.
• Lead business analyst on two critical front office applications, and key member on a team of BAs on a digital e-commerce website for the Confidential. Technologies include Sitecore, BizTalk, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Team Foundation Server. Working with customer services to developers, to optimise the user journey. Documenting functional and non-functional requirements for front office systems, and working with performance testers and front office users to ensure they meet business needs. Capturing user stories and acceptance criteria, in TFS (similar to Jira). Conducting sprint reviews with the business to demonstrate new functionality.
• Senior Business Analyst for three Confidential projects for Confidential Formula 1. Workshop Facilitation; Requirements Elicitation; Requirements Documentation; Requirements Validation; Process Improvement; Senior Stakeholder Management; very close daily interactions with and Leadership of six people across two offshore development teams; attending and contributing to Steering Committee meetings; Agile/Scrum: capturing user stories, defining acceptance criteria, refining and ordering project backlog with Product Owner (who is also a senior Steering Committee member), extensive utilisation of Visual Studio Team Services (formerly Visual Studio Online - similar to Jira), facilitating planning poker, sprint planning, sprint reviews, retrospectives. Production of UML Activity diagrams and UML Class diagrams using MS Visio, and mapping the data model to the UI. Also served as a mentor to a new BA on UML activity diagrams. Highly praised by CTO, IT Director, Programme Manager, Product Owner and Development team.
• A Multinational Confidential ’s incumbent Live Link system was no longer fit for purpose, necessitating a migration to SharePoint. Engaged by Confidential as BA to create & manage project scope. Led requirements gathering; acted as single point of contact for project as part of wider $200M programme ; liaised with colleagues in multiple global locations; analysis and validation of requirements to ensure objectives were met; and lead the transition/handover to an offshore team. Succeeded in scoping & planning migration, resulting in significant improvements via enhanced functionality & data access.
• Confidential bid for their biggest ever deal at the time - a $100M Unified Communications implementation for a Multinational Confidential was jeopardised due to their specialist PM falling ill. Engaged as emergency PM to rescue the bid. Liaised with European VPs & global SMEs; coordinated & created RFP; worked with SME to translate technical requirements into a business proposal; performed internal review; participated in global deal review; Succeeded in creating RFP, resulting in a completed bid multiples larger than any previous pitch by Confidential .

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

• Business Analysis
• Supplier / Offshore team management
• Process Improvement
• Software Engineering / UML
• Senior Stakeholder Management
• Agile / Scrum
• User Story + Acceptance Criteria documentation
• Web Based Applications
• Front Office

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Confidential

Business Systems Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for conducting Business Analysis for multiple Front Office trading applications, as well as a large digital/e-commerce programme .

Confidential

Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for providing Business Analysis and Project Management services for a range of clients requiring Microsoft expertise and MS-based business change.

Confidential

Senior Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Performing Workshop Facilitation, Requirements Elicitation, Requirements Documentation, Requirements Validation, Process Improvement, Stakeholder Management, Management of two offshore team, Agile Delivery.

Confidential

Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Engaged as Business Analyst to manage scope for Business Change work stream projects which formed a part of a larger $200M programme to migrate from Live Link to SharePoint
• Gathered, documented and validated requirements for a number of projects incorporated within programme .
• Conducted data analysis to identify irrelevant data not required for migration and therefore not in scope - directly resulting in significant cost savings.
• Performed role as single point of contact for scope changes to Programme, liaising with other BAs, PMs and Programme Director to ensure alignment to other work streams .
• Designed, populated and maintained complex inventory of scope for portfolio of 300+ projects.
• Created and ran programme inventory reports.
• Liaised with team of global/multi-shore Project Managers in order to conduct data analysis and provide relevant insight.
• Facilitated workshops to gather lessons learnt, promote collaboration and team building, and align on strategy going forward.
• Validation of requirements via stakeholder workshops to ensure alignment.
• Scoped and planned migration from Live Link to SharePoint (see Career Highlights).
• Negotiated with fellow BAs to ensure 16TB of unassigned data was reclaimed from various other work streams, resulting in retention of $16M of potentially-lost revenue.

Confidential

Business Analyst / Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Following 2 failed attempts to deliver by other consultancies, engaged to support an upgrade of operating systems used Sales team from antiquated Windows ’95 to Windows 7.
• Worked with stakeholders to ensure business understanding of requirements and as well as the significant benefits to be gained.
• Drove acceptance of software and IT platform change despite technophobic department, initially resistant to contractors as well as in-house IT.
• Successfully led upgrade to Windows 7 (see Career Highlights).

Confidential

Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Engaged to assist Senior BA with requirements definition for upgrade to cloud-based Office 365, designed to reduce costs and facilitate use of a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy.
• Performed analysis of existing systems’ data.
• Liaised with mid-level stakeholders to define requirements for programme portal.
• Utilised Site Core to design and implement SharePoint for programme portal.
• Assisted with planning and facilitation of requirements workshops.
• Successfully defined requirements for upgrade, resulting in implementation of Office 365 which facilitated use of BYOD and provided significant savings and productivity.

Confidential

Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Assigned as BA to support the creation of an RFP in response to a request from a Confidential to implement a major business and IT transformation, with particular focus on Business Change work streams .
• Conducted QA of an initial draft of RFP and identified weaknesses and gaps.
• Liaised with SMEs from Accenture to ensure feasibility of deliverables within RFP.
• Provided guidance on how to improve suggested delivery methods stated within RFP.
• Successfully assisted creation of full RFP, resulting in Confidential bid to SSE which laid groundwork for potential new business.

Business Analyst

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Engaged to define processes, and conduct transition/handover of the PMO role to an offshore team, as part of a project to improve critical trading applications and software.
• Liaised with client to understand and map workflows for internal processes.
• Managed handover of processes from the Client to the onshore project team.
• Managed handover of process from the onshore project team to the offshore team
• Managed induction process for incoming team members.
• Responsible for documenting and following up on actions resulting from monthly review meetings of 6 groups of Delivery Leads and Senior Delivery Executives.
• Managed an offshore resource and collaborated with onshore technical teams to facilitate transition of SharePoint list from an unusable portal to a partially-automated platform.
• Analyzed an array of global reports, and presented a concise overview of report content.
• Identified learning resource gap for staff taking MS Certification exams and successfully established an Confidential in-house online learning portal/community, utilized by 80% of the department.

Confidential

Junior PM

Responsibilities:

• Engaged to shadow Project Manager to provide assistance on delivery and to enhance personal development.
• Coordinated the activities of an offshore application support team, and facilitated cooperation with onsite team.
• Learnt about FIM (Forefront Identity Manager), App-V and Citrix technologies and was quickly able to contribute to project delivery objectives.

Confidential

Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Engaged as Confidential PM at short notice - after specialist PM fell ill - to ensure completion of an RFP for a $100M project for Multinational Confidential client; Confidential ’s bid for their biggest ever deal at the time.
• Collaborated with VPs and global Lync/Skype SME to coordinate and produce RFP
• Worked with Afrikaans-speaking SME to ensure technical details and requirements were translated into high level business English and business requirements.
• Successfully delivered RFP for bid process