Senior Business Analyst

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• Job Title - Senior Business Analyst
• Location - BL9 8RR
• Working rota - Monday - Friday
• Working hours - 40 hours
• Working model - Hybrid - 4 days in office and 1 day working from home

Role overview:

As a Senior Business Analyst within the Group Transformation team, you will be working on complex and high priority initiatives across the JD Group to support change delivery and unlock the JD strategy. BA's within Group Transformation will work on cross-functional Programmes or be embedded within an Agile Product squad.

As part of your role, you will work closely with business stakeholders, Project Managers, Developers, Architects, Suppliers, Testers, and Product team members. You will be a key member of the BA community where you will promote best practice and help the team to evolve and grow.

Quality and agility will be at the heart of everything you do, driving improvements that help us deliver quicker to market whilst giving our customers the best possible experience. We are looking for someone passionate about business analysis, delivering great results and their own personal development. In return, you will receive support, training and development to further your career.

Responsibilities:

• Work with the business lead and finance department to create business cases, focusing on effort vs value to inform and influence executive decisions effectively.
• Able to lead and design workshops to achieve specific outcomes.
• Build and maintain relationships with stakeholders at all levels of the business. Able to engage senior stakeholders, using the appropriate frequency and level of detail.
• Lead the elicitation and documentation of requirements in complex scenarios, adapting BA techniques as needed.
• Confidently manage prioritisation in complex scenarios, ensuring alignment with business goals.
• Work with the Product Manager on both Quarterly and Horizon Planning, shaping the direction for your Squad.
• Play a leading role in a Product Squad and begin to input at Tribe level, supporting the definition of Initiatives and Ideas that tie back to Strategic Themes.
• Own and drive forward the requirements during Agile delivery, creating, estimating and prioritising user stories, maintaining the backlog with a focus on delivering Value to the business.
• Skilfully develop and adapt comprehensive As-Is and To-Be models, effectively identifying improvement areas and supporting strategic process changes.
• Positively implement robust requirements management and traceability practices
• Support the coaching and mentoring of the BA team, continually look for ways to improve working practices and the overall BA service.
• Provide high quality peer reviews and feedback on BA deliverables. Fostering a culture of quality by consistently identifying areas for improvement and ensuring high standards are met.
• Take responsibility for your personal development, including working with your manager to set objectives and milestones and identify your training needs.
• Engage in promoting new ways of working and supporting technologies that will assist the team to become more efficient and deliver a higher quality of business analysis.

Role objectives and KPI's:

Competencies and behaviours:

• Be an ambassador for Group Transformation, promoting our vision, ways of working, behaviours and adherence to governance and process.
• Proactively contribute towards making the Group Transformation function a great place to work, improving our togetherness, engagement and morale, and ensuring as a function we promote a working environment of continuous improvement.
• Be a supportive, inspiring team member. Be reliable and adaptable with a willingness to share knowledge and skills to help fellow colleagues and the team succeed.
• Be responsible for delivering high quality value-add BA activities into programmes of work, or standalone activities. Be collaborative, lead and take ownership of your elements of projects, ensuring a consistent high-quality service is provided.
• Direct, coach and develop BAs involved in your projects and programmes.
• Lead by example and create opportunities to support the solving of business problems.
• Build, develop and maintain strong collaborative relationships across Group Transformation and across the business to build awareness of the BA practice and how it adds value to JD.
• Ensure stakeholders are effectively managed and ensure communication (verbal and written) is of a high standard and audience appropriate.

Skills and Experience:

• Extensive business analysis experience gained in ecommerce, retail or supply chain environments is highly advantageous.
• Outstanding facilitation and influencing skills.
• Confidence to question stakeholders and identify underlying requirements.
• Proficient in establishing relationships, analysing differing perspectives and managing stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds; adapting stakeholder engagement style to meet the needs of different audiences.
• Good leadership skills, can motivate, feedback and coach. Adapting communication style as appropriate.
• Thrives in a fast-paced environment and proactively plans/manages time accordingly.
• Used to leading the capture, validation and analysis of functional and technical requirements.
• Experience in Waterfall and an Agile Scrum and/or Product Tribe environment.
• Diligent, focused and dependable, able to build strong relationships based on integrity.
• Track record of coaching and mentoring Business Analysts and BA teams in best practice approaches and improving team performance.

Desirable Skills/Experience:

• Certification in Agile such as Certified Agile BA/Product Owner/Scrum Master.
• Professional certification such as the BCS International Diploma in Business Analysis.
• Experience in coaching and mentoring Business Analysts and BA teams in best practice approaches and improving team performance.
• Leadership skills, can motivate, feedback and coach. Adapting communication styles as appropriate.
• Experience working with retail/ecommerce/supply chain teams such as merchandising, marketing, finance, loss control, UX, design, operations, tax, data protection, analytics, customer care, customer acquisition and retention

The Company:

The JD Group is a leading omnichannel retailer of Sports Fashion, Street & Premium Fashion, Outdoors and Gyms with over 60,000 colleagues over 3,400 stores across several retail fascia's in over 30 markets around the world.

We are an equal opportunities employer who embraces and values differences. We recognise the importance of an inclusive workplace culture in which everyone can thrive irrespective of their background or identity.

To be a part of this successful and continuously growing company, you will have the desire to ingrain our strategic goals of being a people first, a digital leader and customer focused organisation which provides operational excellence and is continuous with identifying new areas of growth into our day-to-day.

We know our employees work tirelessly to make JD Sports the success it is today and in turn, we offer them some amazing benefits:

• Incremental Holiday Allowance
• Staff Discount on qualifying purchases across Group retail stores and online
• Exclusive Colleague Bike Discount scheme
• Discounted Gym membership
• Personal development opportunities to learn and develop at work
• Access to Apprenticeships and accredited qualifications

Interested?

If you are interested in this position, then press the Apply Now button.

Due to the high volumes of applications our opportunities attract, it takes time to review them all. If you don't hear back within two weeks of your application, please consider your application to have been unsuccessful on this occasion

Applications that meet the skills criteria will be contacted for a 1st stage meeting with the talent team. Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interview with the hiring manager.

Thank you again for your time.

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