What is a business analysis

The business analyst is skilled at working with end-users to determine what their needs are. Often, the business analyst has some technical experience which is useful in determining if a user's requests are feasible. Note that the business analyst is more than just a glorified note taker as he is also responsible for drilling down in to each business requirement to ensure that what is being asked is actually what is needed. Often a user thinks a particular feature is needed when in fact it isn't. Similarly, a user may assume that a particular feature will be included when it hasn't been specified anywhere.

It is also the business analysts role to translate what the user is asking for into a technical form that the client/server programmer or web developer can understand.