Business Analyst
(Independent Contractor)
Jacobs/National Highways
Lower Thames Crossing Programme
Jun 2022 - present
The role:
I wanted to try contracting, so went independent and got onto the LTC programme, for National Highways (through Jacobs). Initially, the role was to collect application requirements to support the deployment of COTS products into production. However, I soon moved on to supporting business change by working with the IT Support Team to define and document their processes, ready for business-as-usual. I also worked with the Resourcing Team to analyse their business processes in order to overcome issues, which led to defining business change and technology requirements (for development of Power Apps).
The role also involved documentation of existing applications for both users and support teams. As with most jobs, I’ve also been involved in several smaller tasks and mini-projects, including developing Power BI dashboards for reporting on Support Team performance, and designing and specifying a Power App for license management.
Skills learned:
Power BI development
Principal Consultant
(Business Analysis)
Turner & Townsend (Digital)
Jan 2021 - Jun 22
The role:
Having varied BA experience in different environments and contexts, I decided to try consulting and joined T&T. The role was varied but can be summarised as providing Business Analysis services to client organisations. I contributed to several projects, supporting colleagues, but my main client was the Environment Agency, where I worked in their Data Analysis and Reporting Team (DART), delivering BI products to support strategic objectives. I worked mainly on delivering dashboards and analytical tools for contract performance, and later, budget and funding management. The work involved a lot of analysing business processes and the corresponding data, and working with a Data Analyst to produce Power BI products according to my specification.
I also worked closely with the team lead to review and improve our team processes and become more like a scrum team.
Internally to T&T, I mentored more junior colleagues on BA practices and methods, and I produced a BA training plan to standardise the development of BAs across the organisation. I also set up a community of practice for BAs, and contributed content such as training videos and interview questions.
Achievements:
Establishing the BANG (BA Network Group)
Producing the BA Training plan for T&T
Receiving excellent ratings from my client
Skills learned:
Mentoring
Influencing
Power BI
System Analyst/
Lead Analyst
Capita
ControlWorks
Aug 2019 - Dec 2020
The role:
I wanted to broaden my BA experience so got this role in a software development environment. The job was working on a scrum team, developing incident management software for police service control-rooms. I would receive high-level customer requirements from the Product Owner, design application functionality to satisfy the requirements, and break down that functionality into epics, features and PBIs (product backlog items) to be developed by the team through Scrum methodology. I would also assist the team with defining bug symptoms, documenting application functionality for user manuals and defining and documenting processes for the wider team.
Achievements:
I took a new customer requirement for ‘automatic radio channel switching upon entering a geofenced area’ through new requirement to functionality delivery with my team.
I was promoted to Lead Analyst after one year, through demonstration of leadership and structured approach to performance management.
Skills learned:
Behaviour-driven development (BDD)
Gherkin language (for acceptance criteria writing within BDD)
Scrum methodology
Agile framework
Working with developers
Working with software testers
Requirements decomposition
Software functionality design
Working with UX
Azure Dev Ops
Business Analyst/
Lead Business Analyst
Leidos Europe
MOD LCS(T) Programme
Oct 2015 - Aug 2019
The role:
I worked for prime contractor (Leidos) on a 13 year, Logistics & Commodities Supply (Transformation) programme (LCS(T)) for MoD, transforming supply chain services.
This is where I formally started my BA career. I joined the programme soon after commencement, during a very busy period and in an environment of huge change. My early role was supporting the leadership in ensuring the business was clear on the changes in both IT and organisation, and working with them to determine how they needed to adapt to these changes. As time progressed, I led on planning UAT with the different partner companies, designing test scripts and running the testing. I also contributed to design workshops for the messaging solution being implemented.
Alongside this, I collected requirements from the business for their EDI (electronic data interchange) solution, and worked with an external developer to ensure the solution would meet the requirements. This involved much process modelling.
Later, I would be responsible for managing the migration from instance of an ERP to another inside a highly secure environment.
After promotion to Lead BA, I managed a team of 5 BAs, and ensured a consistent and high standard of service delivery.
Achievements:
Moving our ERP to ‘the high side’ was an essential step in the programme, and failing to achieve this would have halted things, so delivering this was a huge achievement, and earned me a great deal of recognition across the organisation. Getting this over the line was one of my proudest career achievements because of how critical it was to the programme and how smoothly the migration went.
Shortly after a system go-live, our procurement process began having multiple issues. Since the problem was between 2 different partner companies, a great deal of tension built up. I investigated the problem and mapped out the processes that were breaking down. This enabled me to create a data tool to identify where in the process any failure was occurring, and feed this back to the appropriate team. This simple solution resolved a potentially very costly performance issue, and enabled rapid problem resolution, as well as increasing trust and collaboration between the partner companies.
Skills learned:
PRINCE2 project management
Full scope business analysis (BCS BA diploma)
Requirements elicitation
Process modelling
State machine diagrams
UML
Security awareness
Working with multiple business stakeholders
Team development
Business change
UAT
Documentation and document control
Project governance
JIRA
Content Data Manager
IMDb
Jun 2011 - Oct 2015
The role:
The role purpose was to assess the quality (accuracy, value, relevance, completeness) of content data submitted to the website. The website bases its reputation on quality data and near-real time information updates, so the work involved processing large quantities of data rapidly and reliably. The majority of the data is processed automatically, but some requires a higher level of scrutiny. My job was to both conduct manual checks of the data, and to design improved data-checking processes, in order to increase the speed and quality of checking.
The role involved analytical thinking to find ways in which software could assess incoming data, and write these up as requirements for the software team to implement.
Achievements:
In this role I developed a tool that used data to calculate the likelihood that submitted data would be reliable, based on the level of deletion of previous data submitted by the same sources. The tool was deployed into regular use as a processing aid and was still being used when I left.
Skills learned:
SQL
Working with software developers
Introduction to Agile principles and methodologies
Analytical thinking
Writing algorithms
Performance Improvement Officer
Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Aug 2006 - Jun 2011
The role:
In this role I was responsible for delivering accurate, insightful performance reporting and identifying performance improvement opportunities.
This involved working with police officers at all levels (from PCs and PCSOs up to Chief Superintendents and the Chief Officer Group) to understand and improve processes, and employ problem-solving techniques, such as root-cause analysis.
I would work with police and civilian staff on projects and initiatives aiming to reduce crime and improve detection rates.
The role was focused on data and reporting, but this was also where I first learned about strategic planning, and process modelling and analysis.
Achievements:
I built data-analysis tool and process to support our Prolific Offender Scheme, designed to identify those at most risk of recidivism. My tool was subsequently adopted by several other constabularies in the UK for their own similar schemes.
I conducted a major departmental review, and delivered a restructuring proposal to significantly reduce running costs with no loss of functionality or performance. My analysis was used to support the subsequent restructuring project.
Skills learned:
VMOST
Process modelling
Process improvement
Assertiveness
Excel and data skills
Report design
Presentation skills
Line management