Discovery - VitalityLife

Requirements Engineer

About Discovery

Discovery’s core purpose is to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives. We seek out and invest in exceptional individuals who understand and support our core purpose, and whose own values align with those of Discovery. Our fast-paced and dynamic environment enables smart, self-driven people to be their best. As global thought leaders, Discovery is passionate about innovating in order to not only achieve financial success, but to ignite positive and meaningful change within our society.

About VitalityLife Systems

VitalityLife, alongside sister brand VitalityHealth, provide insurance services to the UK market. VitalityLife specialises in selling life insurance directly to individuals, families and businesses; via financial advisers and insurance brokers. Working for VitalityLife Systems, you'll experience an exciting mix of creativity and innovation, within a framework of challenging objectives and a passion for delivering the best. We think work should be fun and sociable, and we want our people to get the most out of every day. Our people are chosen for their skills, knowledge, enthusiasm and attitude but above all, their belief that anything can be achieved.

Key Purpose

Requirements engineers perform analysis and collaborate with stakeholders to identify, define, document, validate and manage requirements so that the outcome achieved enables the objectives of the business to be met.

The Requirements Engineer works independently by enhancing both documented and undocumented artefacts and/or domain requirements. They act as a functional subject matter expert (SME) responsible for one or more applications and/or processes aligned to a value stream.

Areas of responsibility may include but not limited to

• Manage Requirements Development Life Cycle: Work mostly independently, enhancing existing capability within a value stream for more than one business area/stakeholder.
• Maintain Artefacts: Produce and maintain domain artefacts, conduct peer reviews, and ensure integration of artefacts into the wider domain.
• Engage Stakeholders: Engage independently with mostly internal stakeholders, building relationships and acting as a consultant.
• Provide Engineering and Scrum Support: Support various activities in the engineering scrum, handle queries, and provide updates to timelines and progress.
• Build and Transfer Skills and Knowledge: Act as a functional SME, conduct training within the team, and assist associate requirements engineers.
• Collaborate Within and Across Teams: Work effectively with others, share ideas, and communicate clearly.

Act as a consultant to the client on the application

• Participate in client planning forums and advise on solutions
• Challenge the business in their thinking, especially to understand the intent of the business requirement
• Assist business to articulate the benefits they wish to realize with the solution
• Pursue enquiries with clients to understand the "why" rather than the "what" of the business request
• Facilitating the development of a Business Case

Customer Requirements Specification (CRS): 

• Follow a structured process to listen to, understand and document client requirements
  If needed, facilitate activities like interviews or JAD sessions to expand the understanding of the business requirements
• If required, perform analytical tasks, data extracts, run queries or any other form of analysis to gather information
• Following up with clients to clear up ambiguity and possible misunderstanding
• Documenting the requirements in a Customer Requirements Specifications (CRS) document (which may include UML models, business process documents)
• Ensuring alignment between the Business Case and the CRS
• Review the functional requirements with the client, using appropriate formats such as presentations and walk-through discussions and obtain sign-off on CRS

Product Requirements Specification (PRS): 

• Design and validate the functional solution
• This involves interpreting the CRS into a set of Functional Requirements Specifications (FRS)
• Apply knowledge of the system, interfaces and dependencies to highlight integration aspects that must be considered
• Identify a set of stakeholders that need to be involved in creating and validating the PRS
• Interview business and technical owners, as well as experienced members of the development team (Development Manager, Architect, Business Analyst Senior)
• Identify and Involve other teams and domains that must be integrated to for the solution to work
• Build & demonstrate GUI prototypes, to validate the designs
• Perform modelling & build data models that simulate the solution
• Identify and design a set of test cases/scripts, test scenario's and test data sets to accompany the PRS
• Validate the PRS and Test Basket with the client and identified stakeholders and obtain sign-off
• Solution Proposal: 
• Review the approved CRS and PRS with the development team
• If required, revert back to client or other stakeholders if technical issues require business decisions in order to proceed
• Answer queries from the development team on business or functional aspects of the required solution
• Defend the client business requirements

Project Documentation: 

• Perform Project Management activities, such as providing the client as well as relevant team members with estimates of the duration of tasks
• Provide updates to project schedules
• Maintain and update the scheduling system
• Coordinate work activities between the client and development team (e.g. scheduling JAD sessions)
• Maintain project documentation
• Provide input to technical design, and liaise between the client and the technical team
• Act as a project manager: define & manage risks, define and document scope, update and report on progress, assign tasks and manage delivery
• Manage and prevent scope creep
• If required, conduct a Post Implementation Review (PIR)
  

Release Notes & Training Material: 

• Update and publish release notes related to the current system changes implemented and notify impacted parties
• Assist trainers with queries or release notes
• Present initiation papers to other teams at the Channel Forums
• Develop procedure manuals for the system (for use by development team)
• Maintain and update the CRS and PRS with any added content
• Upload CRS, PRS and TS to the SharePoint server and load links into the scheduling system
• Keep status updated
• Check documents in and out of system
• During go-live, perform live monitoring of the new system
• If required, make configuration settings/updates, version number changes, workflow and configuration table changes

Query Report: 

• Respond to incidents escalated by the Incidents team
• Log issues in the appropriate issues logging system
• Conduct preliminary analysis on issues
• Provide reporting to Development Manager or PM on project activities and status.

Service Level Agreements: 

• Agree required support functions with business prior to go live, and document in SLA
• During go-live, provide end user support if required
• Be on standby for possible client issues during go-live
• Provide ad-hoc "walk through" support on site with clients
• During go-live, participate in the resolution of serious errors by implementing emergency changes
• Provide assistance when presentations are done to external clients (e.g. Brokers)

Personal Attributes and Skills

Behavioral competencies

• Team Player
• Coach
• Process Champion
• Customer Champion
• Consultant
• Risk Mitigation
• Solutions driven
• Knowledge Manager
• Project Manager
• Tenacity
• Stress Management
• Persuasion

Technical Competencies:

• Requirements Elicitation & Stakeholder Management
• Requirements Documentation & Structuring
• Requirements Traceability & Change Management
• Technical & Integration Understanding
• Validation & Quality Alignment

Knowledge:

• Requirements Engineering Lifecycle Knowledge
• Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Knowledge
• System & Architecture Knowledge
• Non-Functional Requirements Knowledge
• Requirements Governance & Traceability Knowledge

Education and Experience

Education

• Processes: ITIL (Incident, Change, Release, Problem Management), CMMI
• Technologies: SQL, UML, XML and OO
• Other: Software architecture, facilitating JAD sessions, data modelling techniques, UML Process Design, Industry compliance standards and legislation

Experience

• 3-5 years solid Requirements Engineer or Business Analysis experience. 
• SQL, UML, XML and OO experience

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY   
                             
The Company’s approved Employment Equity Plan and Targets will be considered as part of the recruitment process. As an Equal Opportunities employer, we actively encourage and welcome people with various disabilities to apply.