Contract Opportunity: Business Analyst, Certification Process and Standards Development

Contract position

Position Summary

DAMA International® is seeking an experienced Business Analyst to lead the analysis, mapping, and documentation of certification-related business processes and to draft the operational standards, policies, and guidelines needed to support the Certified Data Management Professional® program. This is a hands-on engagement requiring strong process-analysis skills, disciplined documentation practices, sound professional judgment, and the ability to translate stakeholder requirements into clear, implementable outputs.

The successful contractor will work operationally with the Executive Director and under the direction of the Certification Council. The role will collaborate with subject-matter experts, staff, and Legal Counsel. It is not a legal role: specified disciplinary and adverse-action materials must pass mandatory Legal Counsel review before Certification Council approval.

Engagement Objective

The objective of the engagement is to establish a validated and usable foundation for consistent administration of the certification lifecycle, including:

• Certification and recertification
• Decertification and disciplinary sanctions
• Denials of certification-related applications or requests
• Appeals of denials and disciplinary actions
• Third-party complaints concerning certificant conduct

The resulting process maps and documentation will support operational consistency, transparency, due process, governance, future system requirements, and transition to the incoming Certification and Professional Standards Manager.

Key Responsibilities

Discovery and current-state analysis

• Plan and conduct structured discovery with the Certification Council, Executive Director, operational staff, vendors, and other relevant stakeholders.
• Review existing policies, procedures, forms, communications, system workflows, governance decisions, and related source materials.
• Document current-state processes, roles, decision points, inputs, outputs, controls, handoffs, pain points, exceptions, and gaps.
• Validate findings with process owners and reconcile inconsistent or incomplete practices.

Future-state process design

• Develop practical future-state process models aligned with requirements established by the Certification Council.
• Define clear roles, responsibilities, approvals, service expectations, records, escalation paths, and control points.
• Identify dependencies involving governance, technology, data, legal review, communications, and operational capacity.
• Recommend options where requirements are incomplete or competing, documenting trade-offs and decisions required.

Process mapping and narratives

• Create professional current-state and future-state process maps using Microsoft Visio as the standard tool.
• Use consistent notation, naming conventions, version control, and level of detail across all maps.
• Prepare supporting narratives that explain triggers, steps, actors, decisions, records, controls, exceptions, and outcomes.

Standards, policy, and guideline development

• Draft clear, internally consistent standards, policies, procedures, and guidelines covering the certification lifecycle.
• Translate approved requirements into language that is operationally precise, understandable to stakeholders, and suitable for consistent application.
• Define substantive grounds and criteria for decertification, denials, appeals, and third-party complaints, including appropriate sanction levels and due-process steps where directed.
• Ensure terminology, authorities, roles, records, timelines, and cross-references remain consistent across the full documentation set.

Requirements and traceability

• Elicit, document, analyze, prioritize, and maintain business and stakeholder requirements.
• Maintain traceability from approved requirements to process maps, controls, and written standards.
• Record assumptions, constraints, open questions, dependencies, risks, decisions, and changes.
• Identify requirements that may need later translation into system, data, reporting, or vendor specifications.

Stakeholder review and quality assurance

• Facilitate structured review sessions and present work in a form that supports timely decisions.
• Consolidate comments, resolve conflicting feedback, maintain review logs, and document disposition of material comments.
• Perform quality checks for completeness, clarity, consistency, feasibility, traceability, and document control.
• Prepare approval-ready packages for the Executive Director, Legal Counsel, and Certification Council, as applicable.

Expected Deliverables

• Engagement work plan. Confirmed scope, discovery plan, stakeholder map, milestones, review cadence, dependencies, and deliverable schedule.
• Current-state assessment. Validated inventory of existing processes and documentation, including identified gaps, inconsistencies, risks, pain points, and unresolved decisions.
• Current-state process maps. Microsoft Visio maps and supporting narratives for all in-scope certification processes.
• Future-state process maps. Approved target-state workflows showing roles, decisions, controls, handoffs, records, exceptions, and escalation paths.
• Standards and documentation package. Draft and final standards, policies, procedures, and guidelines for certification, recertification, decertification, denials, appeals, and third-party complaints.
• Requirements traceability matrix. Traceability between source requirements, decisions, process steps, controls, and final documentation.
• Review and decision records. Stakeholder review logs, comment-disposition records, decision log, version history, and approval status.
• Handover package. Organized source files, editable Visio diagrams, final documents, open-item register, implementation considerations, and briefing for operational ownership.

Required Qualifications

• At least five years of business-analysis experience within the last ten years, with substantial responsibility for process discovery, analysis, mapping, and redesign.
• Demonstrated experience producing professional process models in Microsoft Visio.
• At least five years of experience within the last fifteen years drafting standards, policies, procedures, guidelines, governance documentation, or comparable controlled business documents.
• Strong requirements-elicitation, facilitation, stakeholder-management, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to synthesize complex and sometimes inconsistent inputs into clear, practical, and traceable outputs.
• Excellent written and spoken English, including the ability to draft precise documentation for international audiences.
• Experience managing iterative reviews, competing feedback, approvals, version control, and document quality.
• Ability to work independently, manage priorities, meet milestones, and communicate emerging risks promptly in a remote environment.
• Ability to provide at least two professional references relevant to comparable work.

Preferred Qualifications

• Business-analysis certification, such as CBAP or PMI-PBA.
• Certification or formal training in process improvement, BPMN, Lean, Six Sigma, or a comparable methodology.
• Post-secondary degree in business administration, information systems, public administration, or a related discipline.
• Experience with professional certification or credentialing programs, standards bodies, associations, regulated processes, or accreditation environments.
• Experience designing disciplinary, complaints, appeals, eligibility, or other procedurally sensitive workflows in collaboration with legal counsel.
• Knowledge of data management or familiarity with DAMA-DMBOK® and the Certified Data Management Professional® program.
• Experience translating business processes into technology, data, reporting, or vendor requirements.

Engagement Terms

• Term. Six months, with any extension subject to performance, organizational need, budget, and a written agreement.
• Rate. USD $80 to $100 per hour, commensurate with qualifications and relevant experience.
• Hours. Hours and weekly availability will be established in the contract and approved work plan. The contractor must obtain approval before exceeding agreed limits.

Application Requirements

Applicants should submit the following by email to hr@dama.org no later than October 8, 2026:

• A résumé or curriculum vitae demonstrating the required experience.
• A brief cover letter describing relevant certification, standards, governance, or process-transformation work.
• Two examples of comparable work products, redacted as necessary, such as a process map, policy, standard, procedure, or requirements package.
• Confirmation of hourly rate within the stated range and availability for the six-month term.
• Contact information for at least two professional references.
• A one-page approach note describing how you would run the first 30 days of discovery: who you would talk to first and why, what you would collect, and what you would deliver by day 30. One page maximum.
• To confirm you have read this posting in full, use the exact email subject line "BA Contract, Blueprint, [Your Name]". Submissions without this subject line will not be reviewed.

Selection Process

DAMA International® may assess candidates through résumé and work-sample review, a structured interview, reference checks, and discussion of a representative case or work approach. Selection will consider demonstrated capability, relevant experience, communication, judgment, availability, and value within the approved rate range. Only submissions that meet the application requirements above, including the required subject line, will be reviewed.

DAMA International® is committed to a fair and inclusive selection process. Applicants who require an accommodation during the selection process may identify the support they need when contacted.