Strategic Business Planning Analyst

About the role

The Strategic Business Planning Analyst supports the implementation of strategic and execution plans, working in cadence with cross functional value streams across all initiative inputs, integrating the planning process across all business units and ensures commercial alignment with business objectives.

What you’ll be doing

Planning cycles and coordination 

• Support quarterly, annual and medium-term planning cycles, readiness checks, reforecasting and agreed planning cadences. 
• Coordinate planning inputs, actions, dependencies and deadlines across portfolios, escalating gaps or conflicts to the Lead. 
• Maintain clear traceability between priorities, initiatives, epics, delivery milestones, capacity assumptions and expected outcomes. 
• Prepare planning packs, working views, decision inputs and follow-up actions, ensuring information is complete, consistent and timely. 

Jira tooling and data quality 

• Provide hands-on Jira expertise, including JQL, filters, dashboards, structures, workflows, issue hierarchies and data-quality controls. 
• Build and maintain reusable dashboards, reports, templates and guidance that support consistent portfolio and unit reporting. 
• Complete regular data-quality reviews, identify anomalies and work with teams to correct issues at source rather than relying on manual workarounds. 
• Support proportionate tooling configuration and automation, working with platform owners and the Lead where changes require governance or approval. 
• Help maintain common definitions, naming conventions, mandatory metadata and reporting standards across teams. 

Workflow agile ways of working and delivery insight 

• Use Jira and related information to monitor flow, throughput, ageing work, blockers, dependencies, milestone confidence and delivery predictability. 
• Understand common agile and product delivery methods and help teams apply practical workflow disciplines, including backlog hygiene, work-in-progress control and clear acceptance criteria. 
• Identify emerging risks, bottlenecks and inconsistent practices, bringing evidence and practical options to the Lead and accountable delivery teams. 
• Produce concise, accurate insight focused on exceptions, decisions and actions rather than activity reporting. 

Unit initiatives and transformation support 

• Coordinate workstreams within unit-wide initiatives, maintaining plans, actions, risks, dependencies, decisions, communications and adoption evidence. 
• Take ownership of defined deliverables or improvement activities, working proactively across teams to keep progress on track. 
• Support pilots, rollout, training, engagement, adoption and transition into business-as-usual ways of working. 
• Monitor whether changes are being used as intended and recommend corrective action or further coaching. 

Standards coaching and continuous improvement 

• Coach colleagues in effective Jira use, planning hygiene, reporting disciplines and standardised best-practice ways of working. 
• Create accessible guidance, examples, playbooks, checklists and learning materials that make good practice easy to adopt. 
• Listen to user feedback and identify opportunities to simplify processes, remove duplication and automate low-value administration. 
• Promote a continuous-improvement mindset and support communities of practice across Product, Engineering, Delivery and Portfolio Operations. 

Collaboration and operational control 

• Build effective working relationships across Data, including Product, Engineering, Delivery, Portfolio Operations, Finance, Workforce and Commercial teams. 
• Maintain meticulous records, version control, audit trails and action follow-through for the areas supported by the role. 
• Communicate clearly, adapt to different audiences and raise concerns early when information, ownership or delivery confidence is unclear. 
• Work flexibly across team priorities while remaining accountable for agreed outputs, quality and deadlines.

Essential Skills / Experience

• Hands-on experience using Jira for delivery management, reporting or portfolio insight, including JQL, filters and dashboards. 
• Experience supporting planning cycles, delivery governance, PMO, portfolio operations, transformation or a comparable technology environment. 
• Experience coordinating actions, risks, dependencies, milestones and stakeholder inputs across multiple teams. 
• Experience applying agile ways of working and improving workflow, backlog or delivery-data quality. 
• Experience creating reports, dashboards, guidance or templates that are used by others. 
• Evidence of coaching colleagues or supporting adoption of standardised ways of working. 
• Strong written, verbal, analytical and problem-solving skills. 

Desirable Skills / Experience

• Power BI, Confluence, Excel, Jira Align, Azure DevOps or similar tools. 
• Lean, Kanban, Scrum, SAFe or Lean Portfolio Management practices. 
• Portfolio planning, capacity management, financial or FinOps insight, benefits tracking or investment traceability. 
• Working in a large, matrixed technology organisation or cross-unit transformation environment.