PROGRAM OPERATIONS ANALYST (PROJECT/TEMPORARY)

The University of Washington (UW) is proud to be one of the nation’s premier educational and research institutions. Our people are the most important asset in our pursuit of achieving excellence in education, research, and community service. Our staff not only enjoys outstanding benefits and professional growth opportunities, but also an environment noted for diversity, community involvement, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits, and natural beauty.

At the University of Washington, diversity is integral to excellence. We value and honor diverse experiences and perspectives, strive to create welcoming and respectful learning environments, and promote access, opportunity and justice for all.

The Vice Provost of Academic and Student Affairs (ASA), oversees the work of teams focused on pilot and project support and advancement, the Center for Teaching and Learning, Academic Technologies, and Enrollment Management with the mission of enhancing the student experience for all students, inside and outside the classroom. The goals of ASA include supporting faculty excellence and innovation in teaching and learning; promoting access, engagement, and success of a diverse student body; and creating graduate leaders in life and career.

Academic & Student Affairs Information Services (ASA-IS) is a unit within ASA, which provides desktop support, infrastructure administration, website design, creation and content management, custom web applications and forms, infrastructure security and IT consulting for ASA, Executive Office (EO) and Center for Shared Services (CSS) supported units.

Under the direct supervision of the Director, ASA-IS, and as a member of the ASA-IS Consulting team, the Program Operations Analyst has the primary responsibility for facilitating the discovery and selection of IT technologies to be used by ASA and EO units in helping with their business processes and workflows. It will collaborate with data, systems, and business process experts to help identify the optimal tools to meet the university’s diverse, rapidly changing needs. This position will also assist in delivering a set of technical specifications for integrating these tools with existing UW systems.

Further, this position will be responsible for planning, managing, implementing, monitoring, communicating and reporting on sub-projects for ASA-IS.

This position will work with ASA and EO technical and business users to translate the current business processes and the data that informs them into technology options. This will also require preparing for additional decision and data points to be introduced in future cycles so this work must be easily adaptable. This role will be asked to understand how to connect various tools with a larger overall systems environment and encourage the successful adoption of them by the end users.  Managing projects will involve close partnership and collaboration with other units and a high degree of tact, customer service, diplomacy and confidentiality.

This position supports business processes and systems that are essential to the success of enhancing the student experience, supporting faculty excellence and innovation in teaching and learning.

Duties and Responsibilities:
Business Analysis
• Intake and documentation of current business process.
• Document relevant as-is data and systems landscape as it relates to business workflow.
• Identify potential roadblocks, unmet needs, and areas for potential improvement.
• Optimizing Potential Systems for Fit-Gap Analysis, Demonstrations, and User Acceptance Testing.
• Determine what potential solutions should be assessed and develop the criteria based on user needs.
• Set up relevant systems with internally identifiable data to demonstrate all positive and negative features.
• Use these previously identified criteria to develop UAT scripts for the leadership team to select the preferred solution.
• Develop To-Be Business Processes and Technical Specifications for Implementation
• Translate the work down to set up the candidate system(s) in a production environment.
• Develop the Business Process of how the system will be updated to reflect changes to policies/goals and how the business users will interact with the system in real time.

Project Management
• Project Coordination and Management: Provide support for ASA and EO initiatives through coordination of projects and sub-projects
• Utilize special knowledge and experience to support the director, project sponsors, and team to develop, implement and track projects and sub-projects
• Develop and update project plans and timelines to track progress
• Work with project partners and stakeholders to ensure goals are met on time
• Manage project close-out, collecting feedback and lessons learned
• Develop reports and other documents relevant to each project
• Conduct surveys, benchmarking research, literature reviews, focus groups and related reports
• Produce written and visual communications materials related to each project
• Provide staff support at committee meetings as needed
• Support ad-hoc special projects for UW senior leadership, advancement or communications colleagues, and members of the team
• Other administrative duties as required    

Minimum Qualifications:
• Bachelor's Degree in computer science, information technology or equivalent work experience
• A minimum of 4 years of related professional work experience
• Requirements gathering with end users, translating these requirements into specifications, and implementing them in the chosen solution.
• Supporting ongoing development of an implemented product.
• Experience managing or coordinating projects or programs or other equivalent experience from which comparable knowledge and skills have been acquired
• Experience managing and communicating with internal and external stakeholders with professionalism and diplomacy

Desired Qualifications:
• Coursework, training or certificate in project management
• Familiarity with the basic internal workings of the University of Washington or a similar large, public research university
• Experience with project management and team tracking technology, including Wiki, Jira, code repositories, and various team communication tools.

Application Process:
The application process for UW positions may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process.  These assessments may include Work Authorization, Cover Letter, and/or others.  Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.