Lead Solution Analyst
Absa · Johannesburg
Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.
With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.
Belonging at Absa
Absa is committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from suitably qualified individuals from diverse backgrounds. In support of our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) commitments and Employment Equity objectives, preference may be given to candidates from underrepresented designated groups, including persons with disabilities. We encourage applicants who may require reasonable accommodation during the recruitment process to let us know so that appropriate support can be provided.
Job Summary
Work in high complexity environments, fully embedded in a DevOps team, leveraging specialist analysis tools, frameworks, techniques and practices to elicit, define and organize business requirements, across multiple stakeholder groups. Translate & document these business requirements into user stories & specifications (Full Stack, Cross System) detailing integration points, business & associated risk / opportunities to be realised. And following this analysis, work collaboratively within squads to ensure the business requirements are met through DevOps design & delivery activity & lead the application of testing processes & frameworks ensuring all products & services are effectively tested. Business complexity is determined by: 1. Customer Impact 2. Number of integration points: • Data • Teams to talk to • Systems • Enabling function • 3rd party vs. internal 3. Complexity of business rules & Processes 4. Level of operational readiness 5. Introduction of new or changing old Tech (e.g. redo platforms)Job Description
Analysis (including Business Case)
- Lead the analysis process for complex business areas
- Proactively build relationships, apply analytical techniques to elicit and validate business (product & service) needs ahead of demand
- Implement routines to get to know / become an expert in various business processes (e.g. spend time in business & with users)
- Translate elicited needs and knowledge acquired into user story format that is immediately usable for DevOps teams (right languaging, format for building & testing)
- Prepare and prioritise the backlog of requirements for the user stories linked to the proposed solutions
- Proactively scan the internal & external environment to predict change requirements & opportunities for improvement ahead of demand (e.g. market, risk, regulatory, customer, organizational change etc.)
- Work collaboratively with Tribe Leads (Technical Product / Service Owners) to build a roadmap & vision for the products and services (including detailed analysis requirements & solution scope)
- Define measures of success & key outcomes for various solutions / changes including detailed acceptance criteria for all features
- Define testing requirements (pass or fail test cases)
- Support the development of detailed business cases (including defining solution characteristics, effort estimations etc.)
Solution Design (within DevOps Context)
- Translate business requirements into an integrated system vision & detailed systems requirements. Detailed system requirements must include all capabilities, interfaces and functionalities within and across technologies.
- Build detailed user stories to be leveraged for system requirements design (modular)
- Leverage business analysis & modeling tools and apply notation standards such as UML/BPMN to diagrammatically/visually document: business requirements, business processes, system processes & integration .
- Facilitate processes to ensure integrated requirements are socialized, understood & approved across the broad range of stakeholders to be impacted (this includes various processes e.g. risk / governance forums, change council, scrum meetings / DevOps team capability building, solution design sessions etc.)
- Understand & leverage knowledge on the organisations technical landscape, environment and broader architecture to define integration points across tech stacks for various requirements
- Work collaboratively with project / program teams, squads, scrum masters and engineers to define backlog, release & DevOps / project planning implications of the requirements development & roadmap (what should happen when)
- Work as part of the embedded DevOps team to continuously improve system requirements mapping (e.g. leverage input from questions asked etc. to consistently improve the quality of the requirements analysis for easier interpretation by the development teams)
- Work as part of the embedded DevOps team throughout the design process to review solution design (features and functionality)
- Facilitate resolution & decision making during development & testing phases for any change requirements
Solution Delivery & Testing (manual)
- Define the manual testing strategy & test cases for various solutions (where it makes sense to do so)
- Define & validate quality & testing parameters (+/-) & plans for the solution (socialize & translate these to automation testing teams)
- Develop manual testing frameworks and patterns for the solution
- Lead the manual testing process for various solutions (e.g. execute test cases, analyse results)
- Provide real time feedback to the DevOps teams on change requirements identified throughout the testing process
- Review & monitor system stability, resilience etc. throughout the testing process (e.g. integration) & in production
- Define & monitor overall backlog planning for effective solution delivery
- Provide Developer & User support during user acceptance testing
Process Design & Modelling
• Provide input & or lead the development / improvement of organization wide process design approaches, templates & modeling tools
People
- Provide coaching & mentoring across the DevOps team as well as to developing analysts across the estate
- Build strong analysis capability across the analysis team
- Conduct peer reviews & problem solving within and across the broader team
- Provide technical subject matter expertise and support in the attraction and recruitment of Analysts for the organization
- Participate as a subject matter expert in the development & development planning of the broader analyst team
- Support the people change teams in the design of adoption processes (Customer, Employee & 3rd Party Adoption of new system requirements)
- Proactively attract, recruit, develop, retain, reward & deploy & manage a diverse resource base aligned to an ever evolving tech environment (ahead of demand) where you are the leader
Preferable:
Experience in
- Credit risk domain knowledge
- Credit Originations and Credit Decisioning
- Corporate and Commercial Lending
- Credit Scoring and Rating Models
- Credit Lifecycle Management
Tools:
- REST APIs
- Swagger/OpenAPI
- MuleSoft
- JIRA
- Confluence
- Visio
- Azure DevOps
- Kafka
Education
Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology