Business Analysis Capability Leader

RSM•Chicago, IL

About The Position

The Business Analyst “BA” Capability Leader is a strategic and operational leader responsible for architecting and driving BA capability within the Digital Solutions group. The BA Capability Leader will lead and evolve the Business Analysis discipline within the firm’s Digital Solutions organization, ensuring a team strategy that proactively aligns with business objectives and 18-month rolling roadmaps. This leader will ensure the BA function delivers high-quality, innovative, and standard-driven assurance solutions that support business objectives in an Agile SAFe environment. This leader will create an environment where Business Analysis professionals thrive – combining technical excellence with a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and innovation. The ideal candidate will have deep experience building high-performing analysts who deliver high-quality requirements, streamlined processes, and rapid value realization across digital programs. This leader will create a team who can deliver complex enterprise engineering and low-code/no-code solutions, and foster a culture of technical excellence, agility and innovation. The role requires balancing hands-on technical credibility with strong leadership and people's development skills. The role demands visionary leadership, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement, while building robust processes and accountability mechanisms that enable predictable, efficient, and high-quality delivery across all digital initiatives. The BA Capability Leader is accountable for achieving success metrics, setting discipline expectations, and holding the team to the highest standards of quality and delivery. This leader ensures BA teams operate with excellence in an Agile SAFe environment, driving consistency, efficiency, and automation within the BA practice to enable fast, accurate, scalable digital solutions aligned with creating high priority value for the firm.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field.
Deep expertise in defining and implementing enterprise-level BA strategies, standards, and operating procedures.
Expert knowledge of SDLC, Agile, SAFe, and DevOps practices.
Strong understanding of DevOps, CI/CD, and agile metrics
Ability to analyze workflows, identify inefficiencies, and drive measurable improvement
Ability to evaluate and deploy emerging technologies, including AI-driven testing accelerators and automation tools.
Experience supporting QA for both complex custom builds and low-code/no-code platforms.
Strategic thinker able to align BA and development capabilities with evolving solution requirements and business outcomes.
Skilled communicator and influencer, capable of bridging business, product, and technology perspectives to drive alignment and shared understanding.
Collaborative mindset with a commitment to continuous learning, lean thinking, and incremental improvement.
Demonstrated maturity of architecture through measurable SAFe adoption of metrics and architectural governance outcomes.
10+ years of experience in BA, with significant senior leadership responsibility.
Minimum of 5 years of leading multi-level, cross-functional BA teams.
Proven success implementing or operating within a Scaled Agile or lean portfolio management environment
Expert at stakeholder management
Strong people leader with a track record of developing talent and creating scalable, high-performing teams
Excellent communication, coaching, and change-management skills

Responsibilities

Create and execute a comprehensive talent strategy for each discipline, ensuring optimal skill mix, clear roles, and progressive career paths to support enterprise BA needs and proactively align with 18-month rolling roadmaps.
Support planning processes to understand business goals and align future BA goals and strategies
Recruit, lead and mentor a diverse and high-performing team of BA with the right capability mix for the firm’s evolving portfolio.
Build and scale BA capabilities to support business growth, digital transformation, and modernization initiatives.
Build and maintain BA competency frameworks and targeted training programs that drive excellence in Agile delivery and provide accelerated growth for early-career and mid-level professionals.
Foster a collaborative, learning-oriented culture focused on innovation, quality, continuous improvement, curiosity, and peer mentoring are core expectations.
Develop and execute structured career paths and training programs that accelerate growth for early-career and mid-level developers
Define and implement the BA strategy, standards, methodologies, and operating procedures across all product lines and technology platforms, ensuring alignment with the firm’s Digital Solutions vision and SAFe framework.
Lead the adoption of modern BA tools, automation frameworks, and AI-driven testing solutions to enhance speed, accuracy, and scalability.
Oversee the development and execution of automated test strategies covering functional, performance, and security testing.
Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends to improve BA effectiveness and drive innovation.
Define and implement the development capability strategy in partnership with Digital Solutions leadership, ensuring alignment with the SAFe operating model.
Implement governance and quality control mechanisms to uphold high quality standards across products, projects, and programs
Collaborate closely with other capability leaders, including Solution Architecture, Development, Business Analysis, Data, and Operations—to ensure end-to-end delivery efficiency, consistency, and quality.
Integrate BA practices into Agile and SAFe delivery models, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps workflows.
Partner with Scrum Masters, Release Train Engineers, and Agile Coaches to embed quality into every stage of the delivery lifecycle.
Champion modern BA practices and continuous improvement across BA ceremonies, backlog refinement, and quality gates.
Conduct root cause analysis and implement corrective actions to continuously improve delivery flow and reduce systemic quality issues.
Oversee BA activities across multiple Agile teams, ensuring predictable delivery and adherence to SAFe principles
Champion modern engineering practices including DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, and reusable architecture patterns
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align BA efforts with business outcomes, enabling rapid, reliable, and scalable digital solution delivery.
Promote a culture of innovation, encouraging exploration of new tools, AI-driven development accelerators, and automation opportunities
Establish and evolve coding standards, design principles, and best practices that ensure maintainable, scalable, and secure solutions
Ensure BA practices comply with internal policies, regulatory requirements, and industry standards (e.g., ISO, SOC, GDPR).
Establish and maintain a centralized BA governance model to ensure consistency, traceability, and accountability across teams.
Establish and track KPIs and metrics to measure BA performance, including defect density, test coverage, and automation adoption.
Monitor technical debt, system performance, and productivity trends, and lead initiatives to address them proactively
Implement metrics and maturity models to assess and continually improve the capabilities' effectiveness
Lead process audits to identify and implement improvement opportunities
Serve as a key liaison between capability leaders and portfolio teams to ensure alignment of delivery objectives with organizational strategy
Communicate progress, risks, and opportunities with clarity and transparency, enabling informed decision-making at all levels