Consultancy - Business Technology Associate

The primary purpose of the Business Technology Associate is to coordinate the day-to-day activities of business analysis and requirements gathering, monitoring project progress, product testing, and various business operations and support activities.

BACKGROUND

UNICEF’s role in planning, measuring, tracking, and reporting results for children requires the ability to gather, integrate, and share information between multiple actors. The demands for real-time information and problem solving with partners is vital to this process, especially in humanitarian action. While some country offices have attempted to address these needs individually in the past, eTools is the only institutionally supported platform built for this purpose.

eTools is a platform designed and built by UNICEF to strengthen the way it works with partners in managing results for children. eTools development follows a phased and modular approach to software development, with releases based on an agreed set of prioritized modules and features. With eTools being incrementally introduced to country offices throughout 2017-2017, the need for a scalable approach to agile project management is vital.

The eTools team seeks a Business Technology Associate to coordinate the day-to-day activities of business analysis, requirements gathering,  product testing related to the eTools work plan module. Specifically, the team seeks the following area of work coverage:

1. Analyzing broadly-defined areas of need and using functional decomposition to define high-level epics and stories to create a well-organized, value-driven framework to provide the required business value in the eTools Product Backlog.
2. Writing and validating individual stories that are very clear and concise and are easy to understand by business owners and implement by the engineering teams.
3. Serving as a project focal point on assigned modules of eTools in all phases and processes for business analysis, product development, and user support.
4. Developing acceptance criteria to ensure that developed solutions implement defined requirements. Support Quality Assurance engineers and external testing team's activities, ensuring appropriate test and stakeholder coverage.

PURPOSE  & SUMMARY OF KEY FUNCTIONS/ACCOUNTABILITIES

The primary purpose of the Business Technology Associate is to coordinate the day-to-day activities of business analysis and requirements gathering, monitoring project progress, product testing, and various business operations and support activities.

Responsibilities for this role will include the following:

• Requirements Definition:
• Partner with Business Owners and Product Team to define specifications for new features, ensuring business owner needs are met
• Identify and document functional and business use cases
• Project Management:
  • Work proactively with development teams in leading iteration planning meetings to deliver features in a timely manner
  • Manage process of complex solution build / delivery and assist with solution roll out
  • Work with Technical Lead on communicating with software vendors.
• Testing Management:
• Author and execute acceptance criteria to ensure that developed solutions implement defined requirements
• Support Quality Assurance engineers and external testing team's activities, ensuring appropriate test and stakeholder coverage
• Resolve and triage issues surfaced through functional testing by escalating to application development and data management teams
• Execute first level of user acceptance testing
• Release Readiness:
• Facilitate implementation of new functionality through training sessions, demos, and the development of appropriate end user and support team documentation
• Product Strategy and roadmap creation:
• Support the Product Manager and Technical Lead in developing a rolling 6- to 12-month roadmap for assigned eTools modules.

The ideal candidate should also possess the following:

• Exhibit superior business analysis techniques and requires minimal supervision to accomplish rigorous process within her/his role
• Highly understand fundamentals of software development processes and procedures of iterative development
• Understand other processes and methodologies and can speak intelligently about them and leverage other techniques to provide value to a team/enterprise
• Understand the value of commitments to delivery made by a development team
• Understand incremental delivery and the value of metrics
• Familiarity with common Agile practices, service-oriented environments, and better development practices
• Experience in UNICEF country office processes - especially in work planning, field monitoring, partnerships management and travel management -  is a major plus

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATION

• Possess 4-6 years of business and technical specification development in Agile and blended environments.
• Undergraduate degree in Business Administration, Information Systems, Engineering, or related practical experience, a plus but not a requirement.
• Possess in depth understanding of SDLC
• Proficient in iterative, Agile and blended methodologies and their application in project delivery
• Application / Development experience – especially in open source projects
• Proven organizational skills and team management ability
• Strong Microsoft Office Skills preferred (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio)
• Be able to prioritize a large amount of projects and show clear progression of projects 
• Knowledge of numerous well documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps left in the Scrum approach(example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs, etc).
• Ability to do limited  travel (specifically to interact with staff in UNICEF Country Offices)

LANGUAGES

Fluency in English. Proficiency in French and/or Spanish is a plus.