Technical Business Analyst

Technical Business Analyst 2

This contract Technical Business Analyst 2 position supports the Project Management Office (PMO) within the Information Technology (IT) organization at *** (BPA). The IT PMO manages various IT initiatives for BPA's Corporate, Power, and Transmission business lines. This position provides technical business analysis support for small to medium-size business technology proposals and projects within the IT PMO portfolio. Assignments are determined based on proposal or project needs and workload shifts.

This position works closely with a variety of internal clients, stakeholders, vendors, technical subject matter experts (SMEs), and others with varying degrees of technical understanding. The BPA manager, senior, or lead analysts will provide support and direction to this contract position.

The mission of BPA's IT PMO is to partner with business lines to identify, select, and deliver strategic business solutions involving IT that enhance BPA's IT portfolio. We work under the auspices of a governance board, and within established budget and resource limitations to maximize value to the agency while ensuring successful project delivery. The projects we manage are dependent upon business needs and vary in scope and size, from smaller short-term "PMO Lite" projects such as software upgrades, to larger capital projects and programs that may span several years and have budgets exceeding
*** million. The IT PMO is located primarily at BPA HQ in Portland, OR and is made up of portfolio managers, project managers, business analysts, and support staff, with a mix of Federal employees, supplemental labor contractors, and managed services vendors on staff. There may be occasional travel to BPA offices in Vancouver depending on project needs. The work of the IT PMO is fast-paced, and staff are expected to interact with people from all levels of the agency in a collaborative environment.

Since we often represent the face of IT to our business partners, we strive for professionalism in all that we do and expect respect and support for each other and our customers as we work together to cultivate a results-driven IT PMO.

Provide business analysis support and assistance, eliciting documents and managing requirements, to support the implementation of IT systems for a variety of internal BPA clients implementing small to medium-size projects, as per the organization's established System Life Cycle (SLC) process. Collaborate with senior or lead org analysts or BPA manager to identify and plan business analysis work needed to meet project needs, which may include:

• Recommend the artifacts and level of detail for the business analysis effort, i.e. the analysis objective which supplies the technical team with information that assists in planning a system build.
• Recommend the business analysis approach to satisfy the analysis objective, including the specific tasks and deliverables.
• Collaborate with senior or lead org analysts or BPA manager in planning the requirements gathering and elicitation strategy (e.g. techniques to be used, appropriate for the project type and the stakeholders involved).
• Identify and recommend resource levels needed to accomplish the business analysis work in accordance with the project schedule.
• Conduct preliminary analyses on proposals for IT systems.
• Work with business lines to understand their needs and identify their goals and objectives.
• Take ambiguous, high-level, and incomplete information about a business problem and synthesize it into a clear, concise scope statement.
• Assist business lines in developing a business case to justify an IT investment.
• Participate in market research to assist business lines in the viability assessment of existing products to meet customer needs.
• Provide technical teams with business requirements needed to select a technical approach to meet the business need.
• Work closely with internal client teams to provide technical business analysis assistance, which may include:
• Coordinate and facilitate planning and working sessions to elicit customer requirements.
• Guide and assist client teams through defining business requirements.
• Conduct user/stakeholder interviews, potentially including job shadowing and "day in the life" exercises.
• Review documentation on existing business processes and systems.
• Review regulations and policies to understand relevant compliance requirements and make recommendations.
• Analyze the gathered information to present an organized, coherent understanding of the business problem and the proposed solution.
• Analyze business processes and create current-state "as is" and future-state "to be" models, including conducting gap analyses.
• Review and make recommendations to align business processes with industry standards and best practices.
• Make recommendations to identify the product quality requirements needed to satisfy the customer needs, e.g. performance and availability.
• Establish and maintain bidirectional traceability from goals and objectives to…