Position: Business Systems Analyst
Location: Evanston, IL
Rate: DOE
Job Description:
Our client is seeking a hard-working professional individual. This position requires an individual with strong interpersonal communication, project management capabilities, and analytical and documentation skills to coordinate the maintenance and development of various application and infrastructure projects for the corporation. This individual will work with IT vendors, internal business and technical staff, and external subject matter experts to gather and document the business and system requirements and oversee the design, testing, and implementation efforts. This individual will facilitate the resolution of system issues, design and implement the solutions to approved system enhancements, and perform project SDLC management. All of this must be accomplished in a cost-effective manner to help the corporation meet the full potential of its mission.
Primary Responsibilities:
Work closely with the corporation's management team to understand the business, mission, goals, and objectives
Gain in-depth knowledge of the corporate functions, processes, operations, and IT environment, and learn how business applications are used to achieve these
Improve systems by studying current practices and designing modifications
Maintain system protocols by writing and updating procedures
Assist in determining the need for, and selection of, any outside resources or tools
Perform the following project responsibilities:
Clearly define the project objectives and scope
Complete a project plan (i.e., project charter) and other management documents following project manager or PMI standards
Monitor project progress by tracking activity, resolving problems, publishing progress reports, and recommending actions
Work with business stakeholders to understand priorities and order the Product Backlog accordingly
Elicit business requirements using interviews, document analysis, requirements workshops, surveys, business process descriptions, use cases, scenarios, business analysis, and task and workflow analysis
Critically evaluate information gathered from multiple sources, reconcile conflicts, decompose high level information into details, abstract up from low level information to a general understanding, and distinguish user requests from the underlying true needs
Proactively communicate and collaborate with external and internal customers to analyze information needs and functional requirements, and deliver the following artifacts as needed: construct and develop user stories, functional requirements (business requirements documents), use cases, GUI (Graphical User Interface screen layout and usability), system outputs (reports and correspondence), business rules and interface designs
Manage and monitor the intake of projects using JIRA and update ticket project status promptly
Drive and challenge business and technical units on their assumptions of how they will successfully execute their plans
Effectively collaborate with developers and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to establish the technical vision and analyze the tradeoffs between usability and performance needs
Oversee the development and implementation of system testing plans, scenarios, and scripts for enhancements and projects
Document the requirements, processes, workflows, and Standard Operating Procedures using Confluence
Assist the IT Team in smoke testing the applications and infrastructure after Change Management (patch updates, release updates)
Perform various other duties as assigned by the management
Required Experience/Skills:
Bachelor's degree in computer science, Business, or related field
3-5 years of experience in business and systems analysis
3-5 years of project management experience
Strong analytical and project management skills, including a thorough understanding of how to interpret customer business needs and translate them into application and operational requirements
Strong verbal and written communication skills with the ability to interact with a diverse group of executives, managers, subject matter experts, and vendors in a detail-oriented, professional organization with extremely high standards
Must be able to work independently and with groups of various sizes
Desired Experience/Skills:
PMI certification
Any certification in Agile or Scrum methodologies
Experience with systems engineering concepts
Experience with multiple project/SDLC methodologies desired (e.g., waterfall, Agile/Scrum)
Experience working with Microsoft Teams Foundation Server (TFS) or similar project tracking software
Experience with test management software
Experience with managing complex simultaneous software development projects
Experience with web-based application projects
Experience with managing project teams from various vendors in dynamic office environments (on-premises and remote working)
Experience with relational database technologies (ability to run SQL queries)
Experience with User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
Effective people management (soft skills) to foster and grow high performing collaborative teams
Experience with secondary or post-secondary educational institutions is a plus
Environment:
Our client's current IT landscape primarily includes .NET, SharePoint, Java, AS/400 with SQL Server, Postgres and DB2 database backends. The following Project Management methodologies are adopted: Agile/Scrum (software development) and Waterfall (infrastructure projects).