Business Analyst II - Hybrid - UNUM Group

Our Fortune 500 company is driving a digital transformation and looking for forward-thinking innovators to disrupt how our industry thinks about and uses technology. As one of the world's leading employee benefits providers, we help millions of people gain affordable access to benefits that help them protect their families, their finances and their futures.

Are you an asker of questions, a solver of problems, and a challenger of the status quo? Our mission is to provide a differentiated customer experience and exceed the expectations people have of technology at any company — not just insurers. 

We are seeking individuals to join our team of talented IT professionals who share never-ending passion and an unwavering focus on our customer experience. Team members comfortable working in an agile, fast-paced, and delivery-focused environment thrive in our environment where we value an entrepreneurial spirit and those who challenge the status-quo.

Unum is changing, and we’re excited about what’s next. Join us.

General Summary:

Are you an exceptional facilitator who can bridge the gap between technical teams and business stakeholders? We have an exciting opportunity for you!

As a Business Analyst II at Unum, you will collaborate with the agile team and Product Owner to define and document acceptance criteria, leveraging tools like Salesforce and Rally.

You'll play a crucial role in optimizing our processes, enhancing our customer experiences, and ensuring our projects are executed with precision.

This is a hybrid role based out of the following home office locations: Portland, Maine, Chattanooga, Tennessee or Columbia, South Carolina.

Job Specifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree preferred, or equivalent experience
• Has 4+ years’ experience working as part of an agile team
• Passionate about the business direction, priorities, results, and customer experience.
• Clearly demonstrates analytical and critical thinking abilities
• Takes a logical, analytical approach to problem solving and pays close attention to detail
• Experience with Agile Development Methodologies and experience leading Scrum events
• Self-motivated and results oriented
• Demonstrates good oral and written communication skills
• Strong written communication skills to document and communication requirements
• Strong facilitation skills
• Strong team player; able to work effectively within a team and more broadly with people from a variety of backgrounds and areas across the organization.
• Able to solve complex business problems and drive customer experience and operational efficiency objectives
• Takes an innovative approach to problem solving
• IIBA certifications are a plus
• Salesforce experience a plus

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Elicit requirements using appropriate techniques (often times elicitation will require work on artifacts such as Personas, User Stories and/or Story Maps) and work with Product Owners in the creation and elaboration of product backlog work items including acceptance criteria (Features, User Stories)
• Collaborates with Product Owners to manage and groom the backlog for the team
• Collaborates with the Product owner and relevant subject matter experts to lead the definition of concise and effective user stories with precise and accurate agile
• Define acceptance criteria that will be used by the team and product owner to ensure that stakeholder and product owner intent is effectively captured and developed
• Define the detailed design and acceptance criteria for a user story on a just‐in‐time/just‐enough basis
• Review the acceptance criteria with the Team (Software Engineers and Test Engineers) to ensure agreement on testability so the team can drive toward getting the right tests automated to support continuous integration
• Collaborates with business partners and the agile team to define, coordinate and at times execute Acceptance Testing
• Facilitates and Leads Story Decomposition to enable planning at the appropriate level of granularity that supports the just‐in‐time nature of agile approaches and takes the lead in process mapping and decomposition
• Collaborates with the agile team during planning and interacts with the Scrum Master or Team Lead and product owner to agree sprint deliverables post sprint planning
• Has a detailed knowledge of business processes for assigned business portfolios and has suggestions or ideas on how to improve business processes and technology
• Gather requirements for persona of specific user experiences. Completes Information architecture and works with UXD resources to ensure excellent user experience is delivered or Partners with UX and builds knowledge of UX tools and techniques to incorporate persona needs into the product backlog and requirements
• Evaluates native functionality from third party/cloud solutions and identifies opportunities to meet business needs also performs configurations including page layouts, workflows, reporting and dashboards
• May lead the agile team with internal test execution, inclusive of documenting results, managing and tracking defects, and trouble-shooting issues that arise out of testing
• Collaborates with the Team (Architects, Software Engineers, Test Engineers, etc.) to ensure that the team defines, builds and produces features and solutions that meet or exceed what the Product Owner is expecting. Exhibits the technical acumen necessary to be a contributing member of solution design discussions.
• Ensure integrity of work items as they are broken down and refined throughout hierarchy of work items in the product backlog. Identify where intent may be lost or overlooked during the work breakdown and refinement processes. I.e.. Descoping or need for supplementary requirement gathering
• Ensure that key information needed to support PO prioritization is current, accurate and available in a usable format to drive high quality decisions.
• Ensure functional and non-functional requirement’s, with appropriate documentation are represented effectively in the product backlog
• Ensure that product backlog work items e.g. user stories are meeting the definition of ready/done in line with enterprise targets on backlog readiness, often called planning horizons or planning intake funnel along with respect of quality of content and data integrity on key fields to drive transparency and effective reporting. Identify data sources and gather and analyze data relevant to processes impacted by the solutions being created.
• Determine and use the most appropriate means of representing business requirements in the context of a specific change initiative, ensuring traceability back to the source (tools such as blue works for process mapping, excel)
• Models behaviors and practices to leverage and fully optimize methodology adoption outlined in product area. Eg. Customer Journey, Agile Methodologies, Program Execution Framework ie. Program Ways of Working
• Evaluates, adds, and continuously improves tools to the BA Discipline Toolbox
• Teaching and Mentoring peers around business analysis best practices and technical and market advancements.
• Industry Analysis of trends, technology and market advancements and demonstrated application into our context
• Ensuring documentation and change controls are in place for the production deployment activities and transition to production support technical teams with the Agile Team
• Ensures that the latest project progress is known to the agile team by ensuring Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools are up to date and participating in daily stand-ups outlining progress made, progress planned and detailing impediments
• Maintain holistic understanding of IT Delivery roadmap and track any changes to the roadmap are aligned in the backlog tooling enabling teams to leverage automated roadmaps and status report, metrics functionality
• Ensures that Product or adoption KPIs identified can feasibly be measured and tracked within development and delivery activities, ensuring key data points are identified and included from the outset within the scope of the agile teamwork
• Maintains holistic understanding of relevant client personas and uses these personas to refine work items to develop shared understand across the Agile Team of the client needs

#LI-TS1

#LI-MULTI

~IN1

Our company is built on helping individuals and families, and this starts with our employees. We want employees to maintain a positive balance, which is why we provide access to the benefits and resources they need to invest in themselves. From our onsite fitness facilities and generous paid time off to employee professional development programs, we are committed to helping employees live and work their best – both inside and outside the office.

Unum is an equal opportunity employer, considering all qualified applicants and employees for hiring, placement, and advancement, without regard to a person's race, color, religion, national origin, age, genetic information, military status, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, or protected veteran status.

The base salary range for applicants for this position is listed below. Unless actual salary is indicated above in the job description, actual pay will be based on skill, geographical location and experience.

$73,300.00-$143,300.00

Additionally, Unum offers a portfolio of benefits and rewards that are competitive and comprehensive including healthcare benefits (health, vision, dental), insurance benefits (short & long-term disability), performance-based incentive plans, paid time off, and a 401(k) retirement plan with an employer match up to 5% and an additional 4.5% contribution whether you contribute to the plan or not.  All benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of individual Plans.

Company:

Unum