Technology Change Enablement Analyst at Absa Bank Limited

Job Summary

• The purpose of this role is to coordinate and govern technology changes and releases across the organization, ensuring that all planned implementations are effectively assessed, scheduled, communicated, tested, approved, deployed, and reviewed in accordance with the Bank’s Technology Change Management Standard.
• The role acts as the primary liaison between Business Units, Technology Teams, Vendors, Project Teams, Service Management, and Group Technology functions to ensure successful execution of technology changes and releases while minimizing operational risk, service disruption, and customer impact.
• The role is also responsible for facilitating Change Advisory Board (CAB) governance, release planning, live proving activities, post-implementation reviews, stakeholder communication, and reporting on change and release performance.

Job Description

Job Summary / Purpose:

• The purpose of this role is to coordinate and govern technology changes and releases across the organization, ensuring that all planned implementations are effectively assessed, scheduled, communicated, tested, approved, deployed, and reviewed in accordance with the Bank’s Technology Change Management Standard.
• The role acts as the primary liaison between Business Units, Technology Teams, Vendors, Project Teams, Service Management, and Group Technology functions to ensure successful execution of technology changes and releases while minimizing operational risk, service disruption, and customer impact.
• The role is also responsible for facilitating Change Advisory Board (CAB) governance, release planning, live proving activities, post-implementation reviews, stakeholder communication, and reporting on change and release performance.

Responsibilities

Change Management Governance

• Ensure all technology changes are reviewed, assessed, approved, implemented, and closed in compliance with the Bank’s Technology Change Management Standard.

Key Activities

• Coordinate end-to-end lifecycle management of technology changes from submission through closure.
• Review change requests for completeness, risk assessment, implementation readiness, and regulatory compliance.
• Ensure appropriate approvals are obtained prior to implementation.
• Monitor compliance with change management policies, standards, and procedures.
• Facilitate impact and risk assessments for planned technology changes.
• Track change success rates and identify opportunities for process improvement.
• Escalate high-risk, overdue, or non-compliant changes to management.
• Maintain the integrity and quality of change records within the change management system.
• Ensure emergency changes are managed in accordance with defined governance requirements.
• Provide guidance and support to change owners on change management processes and best practices.

Release Planning & Coordination

• Coordinate the planning, scheduling, governance, and deployment of technology releases across business and technology domains.

Key Activities

• Ensure adherence to Change Management schedule calendar.
• Coordinate release schedules across projects, applications, infrastructure, and third-party vendors.
• Ensure release dependencies, resource requirements, and implementation conflicts are identified and resolved.
• Conduct release readiness assessments before deployment.
• Coordinate production deployments and ensure implementation activities are completed according to approved schedules.
• Ensure release communications to business and technology stakeholders are completed by the responsible role before implementation.
• Monitor release execution and provide status updates during implementation windows.
• Ensure rollback and contingency plans are documented and validated.
• Track release performance metrics and deployment success rates.

CAB Administration and Governance

• Manage and administer Change Advisory Board (CAB) governance processes to support informed decision-making and risk management.

Key Activities

• Schedule and coordinate CAB and Virtual/Emergency CAB (eCAB) meetings.
• Prepare and distribute CAB agendas, change schedules, and supporting documentation.
• Validate during CAB sessions that change risks, implementation plans, dependencies, and business impacts have been presented by the responsible role to support informed review and approval.
• Record decisions, actions, approvals, and meeting outcomes.
• Monitor closure of CAB action items.
• Facilitate stakeholder alignment on conflicting implementation schedules.
• Ensure all changes presented to CAB meet required governance standards.

Stakeholder and Service Management

• Act as a central point of coordination between business and technology stakeholders for technology changes and releases.

Key Activities

• Establish strong relationships with business, project, vendor, and technology teams.
• Communicate change schedules, release plans, implementation impacts, and outages to stakeholders.
• Coordinate change-related communications before, during, and after implementation.
• Ensure stakeholder awareness of upcoming high-risk and business-critical changes.
• Support service continuity through effective release and change planning.
• Provide regular management reporting on change and release activities.

UAT and Deployment Readiness Support

• Support business and project teams in ensuring solution readiness before production deployment.

Key Activities

• Coordinate UAT planning and scheduling where required.
• Verify completion of system and business testing, including the required approvals and signoffs.
• Validate deployment readiness criteria prior to implementation.
• Track defects, risks, and outstanding actions impacting release schedules.
• Ensure production readiness assessments are completed.
• Provide reporting on testing progress and implementation readiness.

Role/person specification

Preferred Qualification

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology/computer science (Undergraduate.
• ITIL
• v4 Certification
• System testing tools and UAT reporting tools

Preferred Experience

• Minimum 4 years’ experience in Information Technology or Technology Operations.
• Minimum of 2 years in Change Management, Release Management, IT Service Management, or Technology Operations.
• Strong understanding of ITIL Change Enablement and Release Management practices.
• Experience using ServiceNow or equivalent ITSM tools.
• Experience administering CAB and Enterprise Change Governance processes.
• Experience coordinating technology releases and implementations.
• Experience within Banking, Financial Services, or highly regulated environments is preferred.

Knowledge and Skills

• Change Management Governance
• Release and Deployment Management
• IT Service Management (ITSM)
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Risk and Compliance Management
• CAB Administration
• Incident and Problem Management Awareness
• Reporting and Management Information