Description & Requirements
On behalf of DWP Universal Credit, we are looking for a Agile Business Analyst (Inside IR35) for a 12 month contract which is a hybrid role so does require 3 days a week in the Leeds office
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions, and child maintenance policy. As the UK’s biggest public service department, it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers. As such, we operate on a scale that is almost unmatched anywhere in Europe and most people in Britain come into contact with us at some point in their lives.
Experience working in complex, large-scale digital transformation projects is required.
Business Analyst is a key contributor to allow the Agile team to develop a good understanding of the needs of the citizen and translate those needs into comprehensive user stories.
As a Agile Business Analyst, your main responsibilities will be:
- Take functional responsibility of elements of the end to end service vision and convert this into the business processes that account for user needs, associate research, data analysis and business delivery options to come up with working practices that deliver real outcomes for users
- Ensure DWP BA community of practice best practice is applied in any analysis carried out on the project to maintain quality standards
- Own relationships across the diverse set of stakeholders in particular, policy, strategy, business operations and the DWP change programme and ensure their needs are understood and taken fully into account on the design of the service
- Utilise Agile methodologies, agreed within the wider multi-disciplinary team. Educate the other BA teams working on the service on Agile principles, methods and tools to support their development
- Lead workshops, interviews, focus groups and other techniques to effectively understand the business problems and user needs
- Translate the business problem and user needs into a set of detailed requirements for the solution that align to best practice methodology, with the appropriate use of epics, features, user stories and defined acceptance criteria.
- Manage stakeholder relationships, ensuring alignment across business and technical stakeholders. Ensure issues and risks raised are resolved in an appropriate manner.
- Document and consult on requirements in a layout and format that can be easily understood by all stakeholders, capturing user needs using the "as a..., I can...., so that..." syntax and defining appropriate acceptance criteria using the "GIVEN, WHEN, THEN" syntax. Ensure that you understand and follow the principles of the INVEST model.
- Define test scenarios and conditions for use throughout the test cycle of each sprint and work with testers and developers to identify defects and resolutions.
- Understand business processes and activities that impact and that are impacted by the product or service. Selecting the appropriate best practice techniques to model business processes, existing and new, in order to achieve consensus.
- As part of the modelling process, work to identify potential process improvements, considering risks, issues and benefits.
- Support in the production of business cases and producing cost/benefit analysis for proposed solutions.
- Advise the Product Owner in agreeing the suitable mix of epics, features and stories for each sprint as well as active contribution towards prioritisation activities.
- Be responsible for improving your own knowledge of Business Analysis and Agile principles, methods and tools
- Coach and support other members of the BA community, as appropriate.
- Play an active role withing the BA community.
- Develop an understanding of the software lifecycle and leverage it to form an end to end view of the product or service
Essential Skills
- Experienced business analyst across agile development working within agile development teams
- Stakeholder engagement at all levels across the business
- Experience of working with both developers and testers in a busy role
- Experience working across requirements as part of a busy role
- Excellent communication skills
- Strong self starter with a proactive approach across all duties
Disability Confident
As a member of the Disability Confident Scheme, DWP guarantees to interview all candidates who have a disability and who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of candidates who have a disability who meet all the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. This scheme encourages candidates with a disability and/or neurodivergence to apply. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.
Armed Forces Covenant
DWP guarantees to interview veterans or spouses / partners of military personnel who meet all the essential criteria for the vacancy. In cases where we have a high volume of ex-military candidates / military spouses or partners, who meet all of the essential criteria, we will interview the best candidates from within that group. In exceptional circumstances, we may also need to apply the desirable criteria in our shortlisting process which may include holding active security clearance.
Note
In applying for this role, you acknowledge the following "this role falls in scope of the Off Payroll Working in the Public Sector legislation. Any rates of payment quoted will reflect the gross rate per day for the assignment and will be subject to appropriate taxes and statutory costs. As such the payment to the intermediary and your income resulting from this contract will be different.