Business Analysis: It is more than Requirment Gathering

Business Analysts are still involved more during the initial phases of the project, this is indeed changing with acceptance of Agile Methodologies. But still the role primarily involves creating Business requirements, Functional detailing, documentation and creating  various artifacts related to  project requirements. So the focus they often keep is on 'What' has to be done, which is very good and should be maintained while they perform there roles. But the additional value comes when the involvement and understanding of ‘How’ and ‘Why’ increases. 

 This is what I mean while talking in terms of What/How/Why:

 What- 

 A Business Analyst should be clear about what has to be done… functionally off course. This is what we achieve when we create User Stories/Use Cases. 

 Why- 

A Business Analyst must be clear why the functionality is critical for business needs. This will help in defining the 

business objective and will complete the business requirement; it also helps in prioritizing requirements. 

 How- 

A Business Analyst must be able to understand how the requirements can/cannot be met by the underlying technology, the BA should be able to convey and negotiate with business the impact of technology on the requirements. The days of fresh development are long gone, now business systems are created around tools/products already  available in the market and its often desired to full fill maximum requirement with  'Out-of-the Box' available features. 

• Understanding of the how technology behaves will help in connecting closely  with architects, designer and developers.  
• You will be able to participate better in design and architecture brainstorming and interfacing with quality folks.
• This will be help in understanding the system as it is developed and you will be confident while providing demos, walkthroughs and during UAT. 
• While the high level business requirements will broadly remain unchanged but when the requirements are broken into functionalities they are impacted by limitation of the technology, understanding how technology serves requirements and what additional it can provide helps the Business Analyst during negotiation on what can be done with business stake holders. 

It is very important to remain focused on the bigger picture and keep a level abstraction with ‘What’ during the initial phases and... let’s say throughout but if you  want to get involved and  not just want to be waiter passing on the requirement to the kitchen it is always to good to understand how thing are done.