Dennis Macharia Email & Phone Number

London, England, United Kingdom

Deeply involved in digital transformation for some of the world's largest clients:The Very Group UK - Business Analyst ConsultantThe Very Group was going through a multi-million pound transformation of their retail platform. Moving from a monolithic system that was customised from various expensive off-the-shelf solutions. Moving to a modern headless platform known as commercetools (ct). I was hired to complete a gap analysis of the product on-boarding process to make sure ct was a viable tool. After analysing hundreds of requirements, I was able to inform the business ct would need a significant amount of customisation to do what they needed it to do so it was not suitable for product on-boarding. This led the business to find a more suitable solution using my analysis as a checklist for other potential platforms. Sage UK - Global Re-branding Business AnalystSage were undergoing a highly complex rebranding programme that required co-ordination across 20 different regions. My role as a business analyst was to help them generate an inventory of every asset across all regional websites, a total of 20,000 web pages. Rather than taking on this mammoth task in isolation I built a small data analytics team that helped me scrape the website for every image, icon and illustration until we created a detailed gap analysis document with over 15,000 unique assets for the UK region alone. Cinch - Technical Business AnalystJoined a great team that was already responsible for the creation and success of the used car unicorn start-up, cinch. My role as a Business Analyst helped bring to life a new identity verification tool that allowed customers wishing to purchase vehicles with finance to verify their Identity before signing a purchase agreement. In addition, I helped create a highly complex split payments feature that allowed customers to split their payments for a vehicle over multiple cards.

Milton Keynes, England, United Kingdom

Product Owner for key aspects of the Dominos e-commerce journey: basket, checkout, sending an order to a store and tracking the status of an order.Creating sequence diagrams and process flows to understand how the current system works and how the new platform can be built to support it.Testing various scenarios on the existing e-commerce solution in order to capture edge cases that need to be handled gracefully on the new platform.Worked closely with architects to define requirements for new platform and highlight possible areas of improvement; all while ensuring aspects of a customers journey can be catered for by the services in the new platform.Creating the entire re-platforming backlog alongside other product owners.Breaking down features into user stories with BDD acceptance criteria.Facilitating refinement sessions with full stack developments teams.Transitioning teams from Scrum to Kanban to maintain momentum and focus on release delivery rather thansprint completion.Completing a localisation dictionary to ensure all static text is returned from the CMS using appropriate groups,keys and values.Ensuring API specs and JSON response objects return/contain the correct data in order to meet a business requirement.Defining http response codes for error/success scenarios and mapping these to a localised dictionary onContentful.Completing Product Owner sign-off on stories completed by developers and testers.

London, United Kingdom

Developed a highly detailed process flow of a customers WIFI journey in order to highlight key points of interactions with different devices/applications.The process flow was used to develop a monitoring/alerting solution using Elasticsearch that allowed us to see any users successes or failures at various points in their journey.Defined key data points that should be analysed using Machine Learning in order to help pre-empt potential issues with devices or applications.Decomposed high-level requests from senior level business stakeholders into technical details and also transformed low-level details into information that business stakeholders can understand.Served as a conduit between the customer community (internal and external customers) and the development team through which requirements flowed.Analysed all existing applications in O2 Wifi and highlighted all the possible areas they may be in breach of GDPR.Ensured GDPR requirements highlighted by our 150+ partners, as joint data controllers, were catered for.Raised over 200+ stories on Jira to fix applications that were in breach of GDPR.Facilitated Three Amigos and Backlog Refinement sessions to help ensure stories are accurate and understood by the scrum team.Drove and challenged business units on their assumptions of how they will successfully execute plans to be GDPR compliant.

Norwich, United Kingdom

Gathered requirements, evaluated requirement feasibility and worked with technical teams and non- technical business managers across the global Aviva estate. Facilitated Three Amigos and Backlog Refinement sessions and created three additional weekly sessions geared towards senior stakeholders to ensure full visibility of WIP and output. Worked with AEM Developers and Business Analysts to ensure our front-end framework components would work with their back-end developments. Captured constraints and usage guidelines for all components to ensure that AEM Authors stay within the global brand guidelines when authoring components in AEM. Critically evaluated information gathered from multiple sources and reconciled conflicts. Distinguished stakeholder requests from their underlying true needs. Raised stories on Jira and refined all stories with various UX and Visual Design teams in order to ensure they areready for build by the development team. Worked closely with the Product Owners, Technical Authority, Heads of UX and Visual Design to ensure completealignment on deliverables and prioritisation.

London, United Kingdom

Training Junior Business Analysts in all aspects of the business analyst role including the different Agile Scrum artifacts and ceremonies.Overseeing highly technical applications crucial to the day-to-day running of Wifi for numerous customers.Ensuring enhanced processes and services are technically, operationally and legally supported by analysing and compiling clear business requirements.Developing models of AS-IS system processes using tools such as swimlane and sequence diagrams to identify inefficiencies and help build a business case for the TO-BE system.Managing numerous concurrent high level projects simultaneously across various departments and senior stakeholders, both internal and external.Functioning as a primary bridge between the business, operations, and the technical areas throughout the project cycle.Collaborating with SMEs to establish the technical vision and analysing trade-offs between usability and performance needs.Gathering requirements, evaluating project feasibility and working with technical teams and non-technical business managers.Creating stakeholder reports and maintaining coherent updates for regular meetings with senior stakeholders.

London, United Kingdom

Communicated with and elicited requirements from external customers such as McDonalds, Costa and William Hill in order to accurately define the requirements for technical teams and internal stakeholders.Involved in requirements gathering, MoSCoW prioritisation, determination of acceptance criteria and optimising them for Agile release schedules across multiple projects.Conducted meticulous GAP analysis while successfully reengineering key business processes to increase operational efficiency and alignment of business unit objectives.Developed crucial functional requirement specifications, created detailed user stories, mock-ups and wireframe diagrams to support functional specifications gathered from the SME’s.Took on the role of the Scrum Master and facilitated Daily Standups, Sprint Planning and Sprint Retrospective meetings and participated in the development and grooming of Project Backlog Stories (requirements) with business and technology partners.Assisted in entering and updating Issues (Epics, Stories, and Tasks) onto the backlog using JIRA Agile application, Documented various workflow diagrams for AS-IS and TO-BE processes. Also involved in designing, developing and publishing technical and non-technical documentation using confluence.

Berkshire, United Kingdom

Identified and prioritised requirements for a new market entry application (similar to Netflix) to aid the projected ROI target while conducting UAT with the cross-functional SME’s and business teams to ensure the system was aligned with the vision.Utilised strong analytical and research techniques to identify gaps and inconsistencies within the current system, allowing development of improved and cost-effective business models.Coordinated and facilitated extensive user interviews and workshops to gather, analyse and validate requirements.Meticulously analysed complex data and staffing plans in order to recommend solutions to improve revenue and customer satisfaction/retention.Collaborated with management and external stakeholders to identify and implement changes to systems and processes to increase the success of the product.Developed and implemented new database architecture to compliment new website requirements whist adopting effective database change management strategies to maintain integrity of existing data and schemas.Planned and conducted cross-browser usability testing against W3C and validating work produced as part of the development process.Assured that all user input is validated before submitting to back-end.Provided technical support to customers and administrators as and when needed.Created documentation and provided training videos for the various users of the system.

London, United Kingdom

Elicited requirements for various web based projects (including eCommerce projects) using interviews, document analysis, requirements workshops, business process descriptions, use cases, scenarios, business analysis, tasks and process mapping using Visio.Provided database support services at all times to ensure continuous system availability.Assisted in design (using ERD’s), development and implementation of database systems.Performed database upgrades and migrations to support IT current and future projects.Developed advanced database driven websites and systems including eCommerce, back end development and maintenance of websites using PHP and MySQL.Optimised the database systems for performance and operational efficiency so as to maintain the organisations productivity.Successfully engaged in multiple initiatives simultaneously.Performed data backup and archiving on regular basis.Maintained standard data recovery procedures to improve recoverability time in case of unexpected collapse or hacks into the system.Analysed and managed projects, including having a thorough understanding of how to interpret customer business needs and translate them into application and operational requirements.Stayed updated on latest developments in database services and technologies for good and continuous implementation.Implemented security features to protect and secure database systems from cyber-attacks.Responded to database related queries from customers and programmers.Identified SME’s and drove the requirements gathering process through approval of the documents that conveyed their needs to management and developers.Tested the databases systems and performed bug fixes when needed.Proactively communicated and collaborated with external and internal customers to analyse information needs and functional requirements. Delivered the Business Requirements Document and Use Cases.Resolved issues related to database design and management.

London, United Kingdom

Elicitied requirements for a new recruitment system for the university using interviews, document analysis, requirements workshops, business process descriptions, use cases, scenarios, business analysis, tasks and process mapping using Visio and analysis. Critically evaluated information gathered from multiple sources and reconciled conflicts. Decomposed high-level requests from senior level business stakeholders into technical details and also transformed low-level details into information that could be understood by business stakeholders. Distinguished user requests from their underlying true needs.Drove and challenged business units on their assumptions of how they will successfully execute plans.Analysed and managed products, including a thorough understanding of how to interpret customer business needs and translate them into application and operational requirements. Served as a conduit between the customer community (internal and external customers) and the software development team through which requirements flow. Elicited, captured and documented business requirements.Reviewed and documented current state processes and utilised GAP analysis to develop new system processes that fulfill business needs. Analysed and facilitated workshops to review Business Process Flows.Involved in preparing Process Flow Diagrams and other UML Diagrams.Wrote Business Requirement Specifications that successfully delivered necessary change in a manageable and non-intrusive way.Wrote the technical Business Requirements Document (BRD), Functional Specifications Document (FSD), Nonfunctional Requirements Document and Use Cases Specifications.Articulated the company’s distinctive competence and the product’s uniqueness.Interviewed SMEs and Stakeholders to get a better understanding of client business processes and gathered business requirements.

Master Of Science (Msc), Database Systems

Bachelor Of Science (Bsc), Business And Computing