Who is a Business Analyst?

The term Business Analyst (BA) is used to describe a person who practices the discipline of business analysis. A business analyst or "BA" is responsible for analyzing the business needs of their clients to help identify business problems and propose solutions. Within the systems development life cycle domain, the business analyst typically performs a liaison function between the business side of an enterprise and the providers of services to the enterprise. Common alternative titles are business systems analyst, systems analyst, and functional analyst, although some organizations may differentiate between these titles and corresponding responsibilities.

Business Analyst Definition
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.