Business Analyst

Business Analyst at Universal Music Group

Music is Universal. It’s the passionate and dedicated team at Universal Music who help make us the world’s leading music company. From A&R to finance, legal to digital, sales to marketing, Universal Music is the place to grow and develop your career within a truly commercial and innovative business that leads in everything it does.

Everyone is welcome to apply for our roles, and we are determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment because of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion, belief, age, marital status, background, pregnancy, or caring responsibilities. We also recognise the importance of diversity of thought within our teams and are fully committed to embracing the talents of people with autism, dyslexia, ADHD, and other forms of neurocognitive variation.

We will always seek to make appropriate adjustments to recruitment, workplaces, and work processes to be fully inclusive to people with different needs and working styles. If you need us to make any reasonable adjustments for you from application onwards, including alternatives to the online form or to disclose a neurocognitive condition, please email UniversalMusicCareers@umusic.com.

Department: Global Technology

Global Technology powers the digital ecosystem behind UMG/UMPG. We develop and support secure, scalable systems & platforms used by artists, songwriters, partners & employees worldwide, while championing innovation and cultivating a culture that embraces emerging technologies and continuous improvement.

The Role of a Business Analyst

The Business Analyst will be responsible for gathering the requirements from key business users, documenting the requirements, and ensuring that the software developed meets these requirements. You will be at ease and have experience in working with business owners and project managers alike to plan, analyse and highlight risks and issues, and to define accurate, meaningful and measurable business cases and define acceptance criteria.

Key Responsibilities

Be Technical

• Work with the product owner and other subject matter experts to define the requirements (user stories) to build new functionality using, amongst others, BDD/Gherkin style acceptance criteria.
• Perform detailed analysis of business requirements, scoping subsequent activities required to develop new application functionality.
• Facilitate Agile ceremonies with the Development team and resolve ambiguities for the developers during development.
• Ownership of requirements to be built by the team, presentation of the stories and journeys and facilitation of requirements workshops.
• Create application documentation for end-users and technical staff as needed.
• Identify and remove impediments, prevent distractions that interfere with the ability of the team to deliver the sprint goal.

Be Commercial

• Develop a thorough understanding of the business need and related business processes.

Be Collaborative

• Work with other BAs and teams to understand and define end to end or integration requirements across more than one project team and systems as well as other systems within the client as required.
• Stakeholder management, maintaining and building relationships whilst facilitating requirements gathering and delivery with internal clients - POs, SMEs.
• Work with the QA and the project team to validate the acceptance criteria and modify and split requirements as appropriate and participate in estimation and iteration planning sessions.
• Support the POs, Devs and Tech Leads as necessary.
• Assist with user acceptance testing as necessary and appropriate.
• Assist team with making appropriate commitments through story selection, task definition.
• Improve the productivity of the teams in any way possible.
• Record minutes & action points for each Technical and Business Call.

Skills And Experience Required

Necessary

• Significant commercial experience in delivering enterprise solutions.
• Experience with most aspects of software delivery and life cycle, including gathering and developing detailed functional requirement, breaking down complex requirements into independent user stories, capturing detailed acceptance criteria, building a release plan with user stories in collaboration with the customer, managing the backlog, running showcases and incorporating user feedback and documenting system capabilities, business processes and support handover documentation.
• Have experience of systems integration and migration delivery.
• Have familiarity with the technical aspects of software development, including understanding the capabilities and limitations of programming languages, and a knowledge of testing (System, Unit, Integration, Interface).
• Have experience of APIs and the build approach in the context of micro systems and external clients.
• An understanding of business process modelling, data modelling and analysis and OO design principles.
• Be pro-active in exploring options and consensus, and to have their own opinions about how to build great software and be prepared to defend them.
• Successfully applied Agile/XP/Scrum practices.
• May have introduced Agile techniques and have coached teams to apply them effectively, thanks to their Agile expertise and outstanding communication skills.
• Flexible in working practices.
• Have exceptional interpersonal skills, including but not limited to, listening, written and verbal communication skills, exceptional client facing/consulting skills and managing stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience of a complex, back-end heavy, technical project.
• Good understanding of the Music Publishing or Record Company business.

About UMG UK

We are Universal Music Group UK – the UK’s leading music-based entertainment company. We exist to shape culture through the power of artistry. We help UK artists produce, distribute and promote the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful music to inspire and entertain fans at home and around the world.

Bonus Tracks: Your Benefits

• Group Personal Pension Scheme (between 3% and 9%)
• Private Medical Insurance
• 25 paid days of annual leave
• Interest Free Season Ticket Loan
• Holiday Purchase scheme
• Dental and Travel Insurance options
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Salary Sacrifice Cars
• Subsidised Gym Membership
• Employee Discounts (Reward Gateway)

Key skills/competency

• Requirements Gathering
• Agile Methodologies
• Stakeholder Management
• User Stories
• BDD/Gherkin
• Software Development Life Cycle
• API Integration
• Business Process Modelling
• Data Modelling
• Enterprise Solutions