Lead Business Analyst

**Nice to meet you We are Ascenda.**

Ascenda is a global provider of innovative loyalty solutions and operates premium rewards propositions for major financial services and travel brands worldwide. As a trusted partner powering over 70 of the world’s leading rewards programs, Ascenda develops end-to-end solutions to address the most meaningful challenges facing the loyalty industry today. By deeply profiling local market needs to provide the right technology, content and value propositions alongside careful management of marketing, servicing, costs, and fraud, Ascenda delivers highly compelling and beautifully simple plug & play offerings that eliminate the trade-off between cost and customer value.

**Join us as a Lead Business Analyst**
Ascenda is currently looking for distinctive individuals to join our delivery team and lead a team of Business Analysts

In this role you will:

- **Drive Requirements Lifecycle**:

- From abstract product vision all the way to detailed functional requirements.
- Conduct workshops with clients to gather requirements and propose high level solutions
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Bridge Product Owners, System Analysts, Architect and Developers**:

- Translate the high-level product vision and initiatives and client’s business requirements into tangible, detailed requirements for developers, in collaboration with system analysts and architects.
- This can be in the form of process flows, functional specifications, and elaborated user stories.
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Support Product Owners and Project Managers**:

- Prioritize requirements by assessing and documenting their impact.
- Help the Product Owners and Project Managers to manage the product/project backlog by providing input and justifying prioritization.
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Support Development and Testing**:

- Support developers and testers by providing the first level of functional clarifications during backlog grooming, development, and internal QA
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Requirement Traceability**:

- Responsible for documenting final artifacts and ensuring complete traceability to original requirements and change management

Key responsibilities include:

- Be hands-on driving the Discovery & Refinements activities
- Leading a team of Business Analysts as part of the project delivery team- Shape and maintain the definition of “ready” across all scope areas (including infrastructure and configurations specifications, new functional and non-functional requirements).
- Align effectively project managers, product managers, software engineers and designers on the exact scope and solution design of the project’s release.
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Processes & Requirement refinement / elaboration**:

- Conduct discovery workshops with new clients to gather detailed requirements and understand the client’s problems and needs.
- Refine / elaborate user stories based on business requirements and process design, ensuring that they follow Ascena’s prescribed format. Ensure that user stories have sufficient details so that developers are able to estimate and work with them.
- Define detailed business process design, spanning both online and offline aspects.
- Ensure user stories are consistent and high-quality
- Actively participate in Sprint Grooming and Planning between Product Owners, Project Managers and Developers
- Work with the design team for requirements that requires User Interface Design
- Consult Architects and System Analysts for technical requirements
- Coordinate with various stakeholders (internal/external) including Tech/system analysts, project managers, product owners and ops to get detailed requirements, and ensure that they are met through proposed solution
- Be available for Product Owner (PO) to discuss any dependencies/backlog topic. Assist PO in defining finer details of the product.
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Internal QA Test Case Preparation Support**:

- Support the Internal QA preparations by defining test scope ensuring traceability to original requirements
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Requirements Traceability and Change Management**:

- Compile final requirements documentation ensuring full traceability and change management
- Strong demonstrated Business Analyst skills, with proven ability to lead a team.
- Ability to translate high-level requirements into detailed documentation within the organization’s context
- Ability to evaluate and analyze existing business processes, and uncover areas for improvements
- Extremely detail oriented
- Ability to proactively evaluate and analyze existing business processes, and uncover areas for improvements
- Ability to envision and design end to end business process keeping an eye on the details
- Ability to analyze / identify how a process design change might impact across people, process, organization as well as technology
- Ability to gather information from meetings/workshops with various stakeholders and translating the requirements gathered into useful documentation
- Ability to communicate and clarify requirements with developers, testers and other key stakeholders from bus