RQ11381 - Business Analyst - Senior

Responsibilities:

The Ministry is seeking the services of two (2) Senior Business Analysts, Level 3 to work as part of the Project Management & Program Delivery project team in collaboration with the core project team, solution delivery vendor(s) and other stakeholders as required.

·      Work in a hybrid agile (e.g. combination of waterfall and agile methods: scrum, extreme programming etc.) cross-functional team environment to provide leadership and guidance in developing, implementing, and evaluating online user experience and content strategies.

·      Developing product design criteria, planning activities, business objectives, communication and reporting protocols, implementing planning, product prioritization and phasing strategies, issues management, quality assessment and transition requirements.

·      Apply evidence-based, agile approaches such as user analytics, interviews, research and testing to continuously improve design choices.

·      Ensure that current web usability accessibility standards (e.g. WCAG 2.0 to WCAG 2.1 Level A and AA) and best practices are adhered to for digital solutions.

·      Work with the team and solution delivery vendor(s) to visualize and design digital solutions to ensure content and features are simple, user-friendly, and accessible.

·      Assess user characteristics, needs, goals, and opportunities, challenges and pain points.

·      Lead the team in defining and testing of usability requirements and metrics.

·      Provide subject matter expertise in the negotiation and development of user experience and content standards and performance measures.

·      Prioritize features & manage the backlog - So the product team has a shared focus across tactical design and development work.

·      Decide when to ship software - So customers can experience the benefits of the product as soon as possible, and the product team can continue to gather valuable feedback about how to iterate on the product.

·      Support solution delivery vendor(s) in design concepts and content strategy for digital solutions.

·      Conduct stakeholder consultations to determine and assess business needs.

·      Identify emerging trends, assess and prioritize feature requests and changes from clients to ensure solution meets user needs.

·      Guide, coach, and oversee the team in designing digital solutions, included but not limited to content design and flow, wireframes, page templates and navigation, functional specifications, and identifying opportunities for new functionality.

·      Provide mentorship and guidance to the team to determine potential opportunities for development of digital solutions and assess the impact on users.

·      Direct the team in leading the development of content, structures and features e.g. user personas, journey maps, tasks scenarios, wireframes, prototypes.

·      Lead prototyping activities for new solutions to demonstrate capabilities and ensuring that new features meet best practices, standards and specifications (e.g. accessible, reusable, simple, attractive, easy to use) before they are deployed.

·      Provide technical and specialized advice and guidance to clients on aspects such as usability, accessibility, interactive and front-end design.

·      Provide feedback to clients on user experience through analysis of web analytics, visitor, performance metrics and other tools.

·      Contribute regular project status reports outlining projects risks and mitigation strategies, make recommendations to facilitate decision making.

·      Prepare slide decks to present options and recommendations on solution design.

·      Lead and conduct multiple concurrent research, content design and strategies to meet the needs of users.

·      Visualize and provide strategic oversight across digital solutions, and ensure content and features are simple, user-friendly, and accessible.

·      Work the team to translate concepts into user flows, wireframes, mock-ups, user journeys and prototypes that lead to intuitive user experiences.

·      Work with the team to facilitate the client’s product vision by researching, conceiving, sketching, prototyping and user-testing experiences for digital products.

·      Identify solution design limitations and advise on elegant solutions.

·      Provide advice on strategic design and user-experience decisions related to solution functions and features.

·      Take a user-centered design approach and rapidly test and iterate designs.

·      Collaborate with team members, solution delivery vendor(s) and other stakeholders.

·      Ask smart questions, take risks and champion new ideas.

·      Identify and troubleshoot user experience limitations (e.g. responsiveness).

·      Lead conducting of layout adjustments based on user feedback.

·      Ensure project timelines are met and issues are identified and managed promptly.

Technical Skills Requirements:

·      Significant experience designing online user experiences for complex digital solutions.

·      Proficient with industry standard design tools (e.g. Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Balsamiq, InVision).

·      Experience in applying content layout and typography design principles and techniques for a mobile first or responsive web design.

·      Familiar with how to design information architectures and taxonomies, and how they relate to navigational design elements.

·      Knowledge and experience in usability and user-experience principles, methodologies and techniques, including interdependencies of user interface and navigation design, accessibility, information architecture, graphic design and user-interface design.

·      Knowledge and experience in current web usability and accessibility standards (e.g. WCAG 2.0 to WCAG 2.1 Level A & AA) and best practices.

·      Knowledge of Ontario digital government standards - refer to https://www.ontario.ca/page/digital-service-standard.

People Skills:

·      Can work effectively independently and in a team environment.

·      Strong communication, interpersonal, collaboration, and negotiation skills to work seamlessly in an agile cross-functional team, with clients, solution delivery vendor(s) and other stakeholders.

·      Excellent facilitation, presentation, time-management and problem-solving skills.

·      Able to build strong and trusting relationships while liaising effectively with internal and external stakeholders and solution delivery vendor(s).

·      Strong leadership skills to provide advice and guidance on all aspects of user experience and design, assessing user characteristics, needs, goals, and opportunities.

Analytical and Problem-Solving Skills:                          

·      Knowledgeable in design thinking, have a user-centric mindset and attention to detail.

·      Creative, analytical approach and strong understanding of interaction design principles.

·      Able to resolve issues in a timely manner, provide options and recommendations.

·      Thrive on feedback and comfortable transforming ideas generated through user research and analysis to create elegant, effective designs for diverse audiences

·      Understand business metrics and able to translate business goals and objectives into digital experiences.

·      Able to prioritize change requests from clients and guide the team in determining how best to address them.

·      Strong research skills to perform industry research, provide options and make recommendations for solution improvements.

Specific Deliverables:

Deliverables expected to be produced could include (but are not limited to):

·      Product vision and road map (now, near, and future timeline)

·      Product strategy: target audience (end-users), problems you’re trying to solve, value propositions

·      User epics, stories and themes / Product backlog and sprint plans

• Data requirements / models (conceptual / logical)
  
• Functional and Non-functional requirements
  
• Test plan/strategies, test cases
  

·      Customer discovery insights through end-user research activities

·      Product features and functions through product management backlog and the authoring of user stories with the business product owner

·      Product key performance Indicators (KPIs) or success criteria including a metrics dashboard

·      Product decision and direction rationales

·      Product wins (success stories)

·      Continuous shipping of product features to improve upon the minimal viable product produced by the product team through user-centred design processes and agile (scrum) delivery methodologies

·      Product risk mitigation strategies

·      Communications to senior management level including executive summaries, and product status updates as required.

Support to Development and Test teams in following areas (but are not limited to):

·      Building and testing support to development team

·      Reviewing test strategy, test plan and cases

·      Management of defect logs

·      Testing Applications

·      Supporting end-user inquiries

·      Defining the integration test plan

·      Defining the user acceptance test plan

·      Identification and resolution of problems/issues

·      Document and manage risks and liaise with other project teams to coordinate project interdependencies.

·      Documentation of all artefacts in a shared project library.

Experience and Skill Set Requirements:

Must Haves:

• Significant experience designing online user experiences for complex digital solutions.
  
• Ability to delivery on a product with a balanced team (product owner, user experience designers, developers) utilizing Agile (SCRUM) delivery methodologies. Scrum master experience is preferred.
  
• Basic Knowledge in Microsoft Azure cloud platform
  
• Knowledge of online collaboration tools such as MIRO, Atlassian Confluence and Trello, Microsoft Office 365, Google Drive, Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams
  
• Knowledge of Backlog Management tools such as JIRA, Azure DevOps, Pivotal Tracker
  
• 6+ years of experience in BA
  

Skill Set Requirements:

Technical Skills:

·      Significant experience designing online user experiences for complex digital solutions.

·      Ability to delivery on a product with a balanced team (product owner, user experience designers, developers) utilizing Agile (SCRUM) delivery methodologies. Scrum master experience is preferred.

·      Proficient with industry standard design tools (e.g. Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Balsamiq, InVision).

·      Basic Knowledge in Microsoft Azure cloud platform

·      Knowledge of online collaboration tools such as MIRO, Atlassian Confluence and Trello, Microsoft Office 365, Google Drive, Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams

·      Knowledge of Backlog Management tools such as JIRA, Azure DevOps, Pivotal Tracker

·      Experience in applying content layout and typography design principles and techniques for a mobile first or responsive web design.

·      Familiar with how to design information architectures and taxonomies, and how they relate to navigational design elements.

·      Knowledge and experience in current web usability and accessibility standards (e.g.WCAG 2.0 WCAG 2.1 Level A & AA) and best practices.

·      Knowledge and experience in usability and user-experience principles, methodologies and techniques, including interdependencies of user interface and navigation design, accessibility, information architecture, graphic design and user-interface design.

·      Knowledge of Ontario digital government standards - refer to https://www.ontario.ca/page/digital-service-standard.

People Skills:

·      Can work effectively independently and in a team environment.

·      Strong communication, interpersonal, collaboration, and negotiation skills to work seamlessly in an agile cross-functional team, with clients, solution delivery vendor(s) and other stakeholders.

·      Excellent facilitation, presentation, time-management and problem-solving skills.

·      Able to build strong and trusting relationships while liaising effectively with internal and external stakeholders and solution delivery vendor(s).

·      Strong leadership skills to provide advice and guidance on all aspects of user experience and design, assessing user characteristics, needs, goals, and opportunities.

Analytical and Problem-Solving Skills:

·      Knowledgeable in design thinking, have a user-centric mindset and attention to detail.

·      Creative, analytical approach and strong understanding of interaction design principles.

·      Able to resolve issues in a timely manner, provide options and recommendations.

·      Thrive on feedback and comfortable transforming ideas generated through user research and analysis to create elegant, effective designs for diverse audiences.

·      Understand business metrics and able to translate business goals and objectives into digital experiences.

·      Able to prioritize change requests from clients and guide the team in determining how best to address them.

·      Strong research skills to perform industry research, provide options and make recommendations for solution improvements.