Department: Enterpr Prjct Portfolio Mgmt (QFA)
Position Title: Analyst-IT Systems
Job Title: Business Analyst
Appointment Type: Professional Faculty
Job Location: Corvallis
Benefits Eligible: Full-Time, benefits eligible
Remote or Hybrid option? Yes
Job Summary:The Office of the Vice President of Finance and Administration is seeking up to four Business Analysts. These are full-time (1.00 FTE), 12-month, professional faculty positions. These positions are anticipated to last approximately two years with the potential to extend.
Oregon State University is actively engaged in several strategic initiatives, including projects that support business processes, information technology, and teaching/research activities. The Business Analyst (BA) works as a member of the Enterprise Project Portfolio Management Office and operates within EPPMO guidance and best practices to engage with diverse groups of project stakeholders, subject matter experts, and process users to identify, define, and document business needs to find solutions, make process and technology performance improvements, and plan and manage organizational change.
Key Responsibilities:Business Analysis and Process Design Facilitation (55%):- Support Enterprise Project Portfolio Management including but not limited to intake, prioritization, demand and interdependency management, and operational excellence.
- Lead the development of concept papers and business cases, including laying out objectives, options, cost benefit analysis, ROI analysis, resource requirements, stakeholders and the business impact of proposed changes.
- Conduct workflow analysis, needs assessments, and preliminary cost/benefit analysis to identify and recommend improvements to business processes to improve innovation, digitalization, efficiency, and reduce operational costs and redundancies, or to provide new operational capabilities.
- Facilitate teams in the design/redesign of business processes through the lens of the customer using journey mapping and other process improvement techniques and practices.
- Conduct interviews with university stakeholders to assimilate knowledge and understanding of business problems, operational and technology requirements to document business needs, use cases, processes, user stories, and business system requirements.
- Develop, maintain, and implement data reports, models, and structures to support business intelligence, and data system integrations.
- Develop, organize, complete, and manage requests for proposals (RFP) and requests for information (RFI) with vendors for complex solutions and/or vendor consultations.
- Document detailed business requirements developed from analyses.
- Translate process and technical specifications/requirements into informative, user-friendly documentation, guides, and end-user navigation aids.
- Assist with the interpretation of user requirements into feasible options and communicate these back to the business stakeholders.
- Define, develop, and implement quality assurance (QA) practices and procedures, end-user validation plans, and other QA assessments throughout the university.
- Work with OSU teams and stakeholders to gather business requirements from users and create functional requirements as necessary to support project requirements and to enhance services.
- Analyze current solutions/processes and identify improvement opportunities that increase efficiencies and effectiveness.
- Analyze current state, perform gap analysis, identify opportunities and efficiencies, and establish future state to align with business needs.
- Analyze and verify requirements for completeness, consistency, comprehensibility, feasibility, and conformity to EPPMO standards.
- Define current and future state business models and build strong, working rapport with customers.
- Identify and track escalating issues and risks to project stakeholders in a timely manner.
- Create process models, specifications, diagrams, and charts to clarify business processes, identify issues, and provide direction to developers and/or the project team.
- Communicate changes, enhancements, and modifications of business requirements, verbally or through written documentation, to project managers, sponsors, and other stakeholders so that issues and solutions are understood.
Quality Assurance/User Acceptance (20%):- Translate business requirements into use-cases and testing scenarios.
- Track deliverables and system feature sets against original business requirements to ensure project meets business needs and documented success criteria.
- Facilitate user acceptance process, roles, and responsibilities.
- Document user acceptance plans and results.
- Share lessons-learned to continually improve each test cycle.
- Assist stakeholders to document and diagnose issues and develop remediation plans.
External/Internal Collaboration (20%):- Communicate with internal stakeholders using data- and process-models to clarify and validate requirements of project: models include, but are not limited to, use-case diagrams, activity diagrams, and data-flow diagrams using tools such as Visio and Miro.
- Assist in conducting research on technical and other business or research/teaching related solutions to meet agreed-upon requirements and to support purchasing efforts.
- Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to develop and maintain relationships that support the University and EPPMO.
- Work collaboratively with EPPMO, Project Managers, sponsors, and other members of the project team to ensure objectives within each phase of the project are met through the application of business analysis and change management best practices.
- Assist users and key stakeholders with understanding various tools and support processes to facilitate acquisition decisions with feasibility/cost-benefit analysis.
- Strong ability to establish a vision that others choose to follow.
- Ability to remain flexible while continuing to make meaningful progress.
- Ability to receive and provide critical feedback, recognizing the need for crucial conversations, obtaining and retaining executive support and decisions, and the ability influence project stakeholders and team members to maintain forward progress of projects despite other competing demands.
Other Duties as Assigned (5%):- Participate in appropriate activities that enhance continuous development of general knowledge of or ability to do assigned work.
- Participate in departmental processes and initiatives, including Change Management, Incident Management, etc.
- Provide operational support to EPPMO leadership.
- Other duties as assigned.
What You Will Need:- Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university.
- Three years of business analysis experience, which includes experience in elicitation, analysis and prioritization of business and functional project requirements, workflow analysis, needs assessments, design/redesign of business processes, and/or preliminary cost/benefit analysis.
- Ability to translate complex or technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and non-technical requirements to technical or analyst peers.
- Ability to obtain International Institute of Business Analyst (IIBA) business analyst certification within 18 months of hire.
- Experience identifying opportunities to improve processes using business analysis and/or user experience research skills.
- Ability to exercise independent judgment in making decisions concerning work methods, coordinating, and performing multiple and diversified tasks while working with conflicting priorities and deadlines.
- Demonstrated ability to understand business strategy, IT systems, process and people change management interdependencies associated with delivering program and project success.
- Strong communication, facilitation, and organizational skills.
- Ability to create systematic and consistent requirements specifications in both technical and user-friendly language.
- Ability to plan, develop and lead quality assurance (QA) testing, demonstrated by experience with active listening, empathizing, organizing, and synthesizing feedback and information.
- Experience working with business process improvement projects.
- Experience defining complex, large scale, or enterprise-wide change initiatives.
- Experience working with stakeholders at various levels in an organization.
- Excellent listening, interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills.
- A demonstrable commitment to promoting and enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, especially in ensuring the representation of stakeholders and perspectives in information-gathering work.
What We Would Like You to Have:- Experience in program or project management.
- Knowledge of organizational change management practices.
- Advanced degree from an accredited college or university.
- Current business analyst certification.
- Lean certification.
- Training or experience in developing and leading quality assurance (QA) and testing planning, including one of the following: integration testing, functional testing, system testing, stress testing, performance testing, usability testing, acceptance testing.
- Demonstrated ability to perform professional work such as research, presentations, and or technical writing.
- Demonstrated knowledge of OSU’s core business processes and operations.
- Experience with OSU enterprise software applications, including Banner.
- Experience working in higher education.
- Experience working in a PMO or EPMO.
- Experience working on IT projects.
Working Conditions / Work Schedule:- This position usually requires some in-person (hybrid) presence, though a fully remote position with occasional travel may be considered for the right candidate. This position may arrange a flexible work schedule as agreed upon by the employee and supervisor.
Pay Method: Salary
Pay Period: 1st through the last day of the month
Pay Date: Last working day of the month
Recommended Full-Time Salary Range: $60,288-$105,420
Link to Position Description: https://jobs.oregonstate.edu/position_descriptions/98960 
