The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) which is the current documented standard for Business Analysts lists the following techniques as ways to elicit requirements from stakeholders.

• Brainstorming
• Document Analysis
• Focus Groups
• Interface Analysis
• Interviews
• Observation
• Prototyping
• Requirements Workshops
• Survey/Questionnaire

In this post I am going to focus on Document Analysis and how it can be a useful step in your requirements gathering efforts.  Blog posts in the future will touch on some of the other techniques.