Senior Business Analyst - M365

Staff - Non Union

Job Category
M&P - AAPS

Job Profile
AAPS Salaried - Information Systems and Technology, Level E

Job Title
Senior Business Analyst - M365

Department
OCIO | Program Delivery I Project Management Office

Compensation Range
$9,572.08 - $14,932.75 CAD Monthly

The Compensation Range is the span between the minimum and maximum base salary for a position. The midpoint of the range is approximately halfway between the minimum and the maximum and represents an employee that possesses full job knowledge, qualifications and experience for the position. In the normal course, employees will be hired, transferred or promoted between the minimum and midpoint of the salary range for a job.

Posting End Date
January 7, 2024

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the Posting End Date above.

Job End Date

Jan 14, 2025

At UBC, we believe that attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce is key to the successful pursuit of excellence in research, innovation, and learning for all faculty, staff and students. Our commitment to employment equity helps achieve inclusion and fairness, brings rich diversity to UBC as a workplace, and creates the necessary conditions for a rewarding career. 

Job Summary

The Office of the CIO (OCIO) is seeking a Senior Business Analyst (Sr BA) to play a pivotal role in the hands-on delivery of Microsoft 365 (M365) Phase 2 at the University of British Columbia (UBC). This role will primarily focus on the practical execution of the Phase 2 scope, which includes the migration of Exchange services from on-premises to the cloud, updating the licensing model, and establishing governance structures for M365 @ UBC.

The Senior Business Analyst analyzes business needs and develops overall strategies to manage and migrate our exchange from on-prem to cloud. The incumbent provides expertise in the areas of business process discovery and definition, requirements definition, analysis and design, configuration, implementation, testing, training, facilitation and documentation to deliver enterprise solution to the UBC community. The Senior Business Analyst will own and drive the analysis process and will be responsible for strategizing, designing and managing portions of the project life cycle in regard to migration strategy including preparing project plans, schedules and governance, and communicating status, risks and issues. The Senior Business Analyst works collaboratively with key stakeholders, including University senior management.  

Furthermore, the incumbent should have the ability to work effectively with various technical and executive stakeholders across campus. They will be responsible for engaging these stakeholders, conveying the importance of this critical work, and securing their support for the mailbox migration. The incumbent should be adept at managing change resistance and possess exceptional presentation skills to effectively bring stakeholders along on this transformative journey.

In addition, the incumbent may need to collaborate with vendors, such as Microsoft or other system integrators, where necessary to efficiently deliver the Phase 2 objectives. Exceptional stakeholder management skills are absolutely necessary to ensure seamless cooperation with external partners. The ideal incumbent for this role should possess both Project Coordination and Business Analyst skills, be capable of fostering change management, and excel in stakeholder management to ensure a smooth transition for end-users and efficient collaboration with vendors.

Organizational Status
The Senior Business Analyst works within the project team including Project Managers, Solution Architects, Developers, Operations Teams, functional experts, and other project specialists and technology professionals across the UBC community, and reports directly to Senior PMO Operations Manager, Program Delivery, OCIO, and takes day-to- day direction from the Sr Project Manager and the Senior PMO Delivery Manager on all aspects of project delivery.
Work Performed

Specific Duties

• Plan, organize, manage, monitor and be responsible for the business analysis activities of projects.

• Understand business context, project justification, business goals, and priorities and update and maintain documentation on such

• Understand and apply business architecture concepts to ensure strategic alignment with organizational goals, outcomes and business value.

• Play a pivotal role in the hands-on delivery of Microsoft 365 (M365) Phase 2, focusing on tasks such as migrating Exchange services from on-premises to the cloud, updating licensing models, and establishing governance structures for M365 at UBC.

• Develop an M365 exchange migration implementation plan with clearly defined phases, deliverables, and timelines. This will include a prioritized list of servers and timelines for implementing each.  

• Develop user change management and adoption plan in collaboration with Change Management Specialist.

• Effectively communicate with technical and executive stakeholders, conveying the importance of the project, and managing change resistance throughout the transformative journey.

• Establish new governance and demand management processes by which requests for new M365 applications will be evaluated and prioritized.

• Establish new Continuous Update processes to manage new features being released.

• Recommend types of working groups; creates and leads these to support the discovery and analysis of business processes and requirements and the design of new solutions.

• Document current state business process, capture issues and opportunities and understand proposed future state, identifying gaps to achieve that state.

• Develop business requirements documents, solutions requirements documents, functional requirements.

• Partner with and support Architects in the creation of current and future state architecture.

• Create process maps, data maps, data model, data flow diagrams and work with and support data architects.

• Collaborate with Integration Architects to design integrations.

• Prepare RFPs, including functional and non-functional requirements. Participate in developing RFP scoring mechanisms and oversee the processes

• Recommend various solutions for the implementation of business solutions in accordance with project strategies.

• Partner with change management teams to create training materials and coordinate training when required.

• Provide guidance and leadership to testing teams (end users etc.) and/or develops user test cases and validates test results during user acceptance testing, system acceptance testing and operational acceptance testing.

• Lead and conduct workflow and gap analysis for operational support processes.

• Acquire and maintain a working knowledge of the university's technical and business environment.

• Participate in the continuous improvement of the business analysis methodology, providing recommendations and suggestions based on lessons learned and feedback from working groups.

• Advise and mentor project teams on various methodologies including waterfall and agile methodologies.

• Lead, mentor and coach other Business Analysts on process, techniques, and good practices and provide guidance on project specific situations.

Core duties: 

• Analyzes business needs utilizing a structured requirements process (gathering, analyzing, documenting, and managing changes). 

• Develops overall strategies and provides advice on options, risks and costs versus benefits. 

• Communicates with stakeholders of varying technical ability and subject matter expertise and explains services to clients of all management levels to ensure they have a clear understanding of IT roles, processes, and activities. 

• Manages liaison relationship with clients to ensure technical solutions meet user needs. 

• Conducts feasibility studies and drafts proposals for evaluation by appropriate users and managers. 

• Develops and assists in the presentation of business cases. 

• Leads short and long-term planning sessions to implement integrated business process improvements. 

• Identifies, elicits, and documents business requirements, defines business rules and communicates requirements for the implementation of business solutions. 

• Prepares functional, system and program specifications bridging multiple projects. 

• Reviews test plans and monitors the testing process to ensure that business results are adequately tested with minimal risk. 

• Procures technical assistance to help in problem resolution. 

• Provides technical leadership, coaching and mentoring to less-experienced individuals. 

• Maintains appropriate professional designations and up-to-date knowledge of current information technology techniques and tools. 

• Performs other related duties as required. 

Consequence of Error/Judgement

Information Technology plays a key role in enabling the University to achieve its goal of becoming one of the world's leading universities. The Senior Business Analyst plays a significant role in the implementation of enterprise-wide systems and processes. Should these projects not be completed successfully or the results not support the activities of the University, this would compromise the University's ability to achieve its strategic goals and vision. Inability of systems and processes to support the University's needs could seriously compromise daily business and activities at the University.

This position must assume responsibility for project decisions that could have significant financial impact on the University. This position must be able to foresee potential problems before they occur and take corrective action.

Supervision Received
The Senior Business Analyst reports directly to Senior PMO Operations Manager, Program Delivery, OCIO, and takes day-to- day direction from, the Senior Project Manager and Senior PMO Delivery Manager on all aspects of project delivery, The Senior Business Analyst must be able to work independently and assume full responsibility for their decisions. Works within general technical and administrative parameters and outcomes are reviewed in terms of technical vision and the achievement of specific strategic goals.
Supervision Given
May plan, direct and supervise the work of staff assigned to specific aspects of projects. May oversee the deliverables as assigned to consultants as required.
Minimum Qualifications
Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline. Minimum of eight years of related experience including at least two years of managerial experience, or the equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own

- Demonstrates a commitment to enhancing one’s own awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Azure Environment with Arch. Design, Migration of Workloads from on-prem to Cloud, Cloud Migration Strategy

• Experience in:

  • M365 expertise in Exchange, OneDrive, Teams, Voice and Collaboration, Active Directory / Azure Active Directory, Intune MDM/MAM, Autopilot, SharePoint 

  • Azure environment and architecture 

  • Security and governance with Data Center and Cloud 

  • DR Planning and Implementations 

  • MS Azure Virtual Desktop 

• Project experience in a higher-education environment, policy and regulatory compliance situations is an asset.

• Experience in change management, data management, and solution and enterprise architecture

• Technical expertise and experience in Information technology project management of large scale, commercial, off-the- shelf (COTS) systems including related experience in managing systems development, enterprise architecture, and business process change, quality assurance and testing as it applies to COTS and custom systems, data migration and systems integration.

• Effectively manage multiple tasks and priorities, work in a fast-paced environment, and manage responsibilities and tasks to meet time sensitive, critical deadlines.

• Intermediate knowledge of applications development methodologies, as well as development and implementation best practices, "rules of thumb", and benchmarks.

• An understanding of key trends and players in the IT industry.

• Effective leadership, consulting, consensus building, conflict resolution, and negotiation and team-building skills are an asset.

Collaboration - Identifies and improves communication to bring conflict within the team into the open and facilitate resolution. Openly shares credit for team accomplishment. Monitors individual and team effectiveness and recommends improvement to facilitate collaboration. Considered a role model as a team player. Demonstrates high level of enthusiasm and commitment to team goals under difficult or adverse situations; encourages others to respond similarly. Strongly influences team strategy and processes.

Communication for Results - Converses with, writes strategic documents for, and creates/delivers presentations to internal business leaders as well as external groups. Leads discussions with senior leaders and external partners in ways that support strategic planning and decision-making. Seeks a consensus with business leaders. Debates opinions, tests understanding, and clarifies judgments. Identifies underlying differences and resolves conflict openly and empathetically. Explains the context of multiple, complex interrelated situations. Asks searching, probing questions, plays devil's advocate, and solicits authoritative perspectives and advice prior to approving plans and recommendations.

Problem Solving - Diagnoses problems using formal problem-solving tools and techniques from multiple angles and probes underlying issues to generate multiple potential solutions. Proactively anticipates and prevents problems. Devises, facilitates buy-in, makes recommendations, and guides implementation of corrective and/or preventive actions for complex issues that cross organizational boundaries and are unclear in nature. Identifies potential consequences and risk levels. Seeks support and buy-in for problem definition, methods of resolution, and accountability.

Accountability - Sets enhanced objectives for self and others. Monitors performance trends and identifies opportunities to improve standards. Provides regular feedback and suggests alternative approaches necessary to ensure that organizational objectives and superior standards are achieved. Delegates responsibility and reallocates resources as needed to ensure that priorities are met for initiatives within area of responsibility.

Analytical Thinking - Determines criteria for assessing issues and opportunities. Establishes clear goals and priorities needed to assess performance. Identifies relationships and linkages between different information sources. Anticipates issues that are not readily apparent on the surface. Identifies root causes and effects. Establishes clear goals and priorities. Anticipates potential problems and develops solutions needed to resolve them. Systemically analyzes relationships between apparently independent problems and issues. Reviews and cross-reviews reports. Identifies trends as well as isolated events. Translates analytical reports into management presentations, and provides guidance to resolve issues. Anticipates the possible outcome of potential solutions. Identifies areas of significant concern or opportunity. Probes and initiates research to identify critical problems.

Business Enterprise Knowledge - Directs and coordinates the development and implementation of process-based solutions that cross organizational lines. Creates business case for investment in process and technological enhancements. Sets clear explanations for the integration and alignment of technology and business functions, focusing on the strategic value provided.