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Business Analysis is the set of tasks, knowledge, and techniques required to identify business needs and determine solutions to business problems. Solutions often include a systems development component, but may also consist of process improvement or organizational change. The person who carries out this task is called a business analyst or BA. ^[1]

Those BAs who work solely on developing software systems may be called IT Business Analysts or Technical Business Analysts.

Business analysis as a discipline has a heavy overlap with requirements analysis, but focuses on identifying the changes to an organization that are required for it to achieve strategic goals. These changes include changes to policies, processes, and information systems.

Examples of business analysis include:

Enterprise analysis focuses on understanding the needs of the business as a whole, its strategic direction, and identifying initiatives that will allow a business to meet those strategic goals.

Requirements planning and management involves planning the requirements development process, determining which requirements are the highest priority for implementation, and managing change.

Requirements elicitation describes techniques for collecting requirements from stakeholders in a project.

Requirements analysis describes how to develop and specify requirements in enough detail to allow them to be successfully implemented by a project team.

Requirements communication describes techniques for ensuring that stakeholders have a shared understanding of the requirements and how they will be implemented.

Solution assessment and validation describes how the business analyst can verify the correctness of a proposed solution, how to support the implementation of a solution, and how to assess possible shortcomings in the implementation.