Lead Business Analyst - AR/08/75

Location: Dublin

Airtricity is a world leading renewable energy company developing and operating wind farms across Europe. The company is both a generator and supplier of electricity and currently supplies green electricity to over 38,000 commercial customers in Ireland.

In January 2008, the sale of Airtricity was completed to Scottish and Southern Energy Plc. SSE is the UK’s largest generator of renewable energy, owning and operating over 1,300MW of hydro and one of the UK’s largest operational wind farms.

Airtricity is seeking to appoint a Lead Business Analyst to help define and deliver the project and solutions portfolio for the Airtricity Business Units. This is a senior IT business focused role and will require a candidate with significant experience in the delivery of key enterprise applications and business transformation programmes.

The candidate will come from a strong business analysis and/or management consulting background and should be familiar with project development life cycle methodologies.
The candidate will ideally currently fill the role of a senior or lead business analyst or be a very experienced business analyst who is looking for their next career challenge.
This is a demanding role which will require the candidate to understand the importance of the role of the Business Analyst team within Airtricity and the significance of its contribution to adding value to the overall business.
The Lead Business Analyst will lead up the Business Analysis activities within the IT Team and will mentor and guide teams of business analysts working on enterprise solution initiatives.
Excellent leadership, communication and presentation skills and the ability to deal at all levels of an organisation are essential.
Experience working in a utility organisation would be a distinct advantage to the role however the key experience is strong understanding of organisational dynamics, cross function business process and organisation behavioural characteristics.

Key Tasks

Work closely with business and IT management teams to enhance, adapt, and maintain the Business Process Architecture.
Be the recognised owner of Business Process Architecture within the organisation.
Responsibility for the planning, development and implementation of process improvement for the company, including the development and maintenance of business process models .
D rive out data and process redundancies, increase data accuracy and process consistency, establish data and process ownership and promote data accessibility and process understanding for the business.
Constantly challenge the appropriateness and accuracy of the Business Process Architecture.
Work with the Programme Delivery Manager to assess new project requirements from the various Business Units, aid in the scoping and assessment of these requirements, and facilitate pushing them into the project pipeline and approval process.
Work with project managers on key projects and business initiatives to ensure that adequate analysis is performed for successful project delivery and that business processes are in place and understood.
Work with project managers, and the project teams, to complete detailed business requirements that are aligned to the business objectives, and that can be efficiently and accurately translated into project deliverables.
In conjunction with project managers, work through the vendor selection process to ensure that vendors understand our Business Requirements and provide us with proposals and other deliverables as required.
In conjunction with the project managers, project team, and test manager, ensure that the Business Requirements for any project can be tested and during the lifecycle of a project are converted to adequate and accurate test requirements, and ultimately test cases.
Understand and work within the boundaries of the Project Delivery Methodology, acting as an ambassador for the PDM, but also challenging its appropriateness in a dynamic environment.
Work with business owners and department heads to understand business processes, derive efficiencies and improvements, and document and implement the process changes.
Work with the Programme Delivery Manager to create a career path for the business analyst team.
Implement best practice process, procedures and tools in the area of business analysis to ensure that the team of analysts are enabled, informed and working productively.
Act as mentor and competency leader to a team of business analysis resources working in a matrix managed environment.

Education and experience:

Primary degree in Information Technology or Business Studies or equivalent experience
Substantial experience of Business Analysis or Business Consulting
A Six Sigma Black Belt qualification (preferably)
Ability to lead effective facilitated design sessions with business customers and business analysts in order to derive data and process requirements and design information.
Ability to plan, communicate, develop, implement and support data and process improvement initiatives.
Extensive experience in the design of complex business systems and rules.
Ability to fully document technical and business requirements in data and process models using artefacts such as data flow diagrams, decomposition diagrams, entity relationship diagrams, and use cases and functional specifications.
Experience with dealing with multiple vendors, assessing complex vendor proposals and vendor / solution selection.
Understand the business value that can be derived from IT projects, and have experience in building Cost / Benefit Analysis and building business cases.
Experience working in a complex matrix managed multi-project environment.
Strong ability to work within a team environment and with all levels of management in the technology and business areas.
Experience in leading a team of Business Analysts.
Excellent organisation, verbal and written communication skills.
Experience using and/or implementing data and process modelling techniques and tools

To apply, please send a CV and covering letter quoting reference AR/08/75 to careers@airtricity.com closing date for applications is Friday 25^th July 2008