Senior Business Analyst - ONS - SEO

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest producer of official statistics, covering a range of key economic, social and demographic topics. These include measuring changes in the value of the UK economy, estimating the size, geographic distribution, and characteristics of the population, and providing indicators of price inflation, employment, earnings, crime, and migration.

This Senior Business Analyst role is based within Macroeconomic and Environment Statistics Directorate. Working in the Global Trade and Investment division which is responsible for producing a range of core economic statistics and indicators including monthly UK trade, foreign direct investment and the Balance of Payments, which are within  the ‘Big 4’ priority outputs.

These statistics are used extensively by government, analysts, academia and the public to help inform better decisions. UK trade with the rest of the world is a key economic topic, with patterns of trade affected by aspects such as political legislation, and global events such as the introduction of tariffs by the United States. 

Job description

A Senior Business Analyst has a good understanding of strategic arenas and works on larger and more complex pieces of work. They have functional and, or people management responsibilities and mentor others. They develop best practice, own stakeholder relationships, and manage communities of practice activities (internally and across government). They will provide coaching and mentoring for Junior Business Analysts, supporting them, and producing development plans. 

This role is within Global Trade and Investment. You will be responsible for leading and managing investigations into business systems and processes where a need for improvement has been identified. You will be the link between current and future processes, collaborating closely with business areas, product owners and developers within the division, and wider supporting functions across the directorate to forge requirements and process models; whilst acting as a critical friend to achieve solutions that are fit for purpose. This work is essential for ensuring Trade statistics continue to evolve and comply with international standards.

Responsibilities 

• Leads the process to forge requirements and process models that define business and user needs through the application of a range of business analysis techniques and tools. Bringing together Business Subject Matter Expertise (Product Owner, Subject Matter Experts, Users), Technical Expertise, Architecture and Test Assurance, facilitating a collective approach to discovery work.
• Investigates business objectives and needs, and evaluates current systems, processes, inputs and outcomes, and interactions between upstream and downstream teams and systems. Captures, analyses and models current (‘As Is’) processes. Identifies weaknesses, pain points, poor practice, and opportunities for improvement.
• Elicits, captures, shapes and refines requirements, challenges business assumptions, guides the business to think beyond current systems, processes and ways of working, proposes potential requirements to optimise processes and address identified weaknesses or pain points. Explores the feasibility of different options or approaches and contributes to recommendations for design.
• Creates ‘To Be’ process models that reflect agreed requirements, incorporating input from Business users, Technical Lead and Configuration Architect. Carries out gap analysis (between ‘As Is’ and ‘To Be’ states), facilitates impact assessment of changes required, works with the change team to define measures of success.
• Gains consensus and sign-off of requirements from relevant stakeholders and the wider change team. Liaises with the Product Owner and Test Assurance to ensure that requirement Acceptance Criteria are suitable.
• Works with the Product Owner to prioritise requirements, identify a Minimum Viable Product, or divide requirements into groups for phased development and delivery.

Person specification

Essential Criteria:

• Business Analysis (Practitioner) - Responsible for investigative work into problems and opportunities in existing and new services. Drives the analysis and collection of information to create recommendations for service improvements. Analyses large amounts of complex information and uses it to produce solutions. 

• Agile working (Practitioner) - Able to identify and compare the best processes or delivery methods to use, including measuring and evaluating outcomes. Helps the team to decide the best approach. Able to help teams to manage and visualise outcomes, prioritise work and work to agreed minimum viable product (MVP) and scope.

• Business modelling (Practitioner) - Models more advanced and complex situations across more than one business function or programme. Gathers insight from senior stakeholders and communicates modelling results clearly to them.

• Stakeholder relationship Management (Practitioner) - Can lead on communicating with stakeholders, clarifying needs and commitments through consultation and consideration of consequences while focusing on user and business needs. Can develop or apply communication strategies to build relationships, using informal and formal channels to engage with stakeholders at all levels and resolving conflict where required. 
• Requirements Definition and Management (Practitioner) - Advise on the approach to requirements management within a project or programme. Define the most appropriate requirements management life cycle methods and ensure the requirements can be traced in all project stages.

Qualifications

On entry, must have passed at least one module and be working towards completing one of the following diplomas:

BCS (ISEB) diploma in Business Analysis

or

BCS (ISEB) diploma in Solution Development

or

Have at least 4 years appropriate Business Analysis experience.

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

• Changing and Improving
• Communicating and Influencing
• Leadership
• Working Together

Technical skills

We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:

• Business Analysis
• Business Modelling