ANSWER

For any new piece of work a BA (business analyst) needs to know

1. who are the key stakeholders (i.e. those who can kill the project)

2. what are the key stakeholders specific and measurable measures of success (i.e. their objectives) and what VALUE for each objective MUST be achieved in order for the project to be considered a success (e.g. increase sales per order value by 5%)

3. what are the key stakeholders unmeasured measures of success (i.e. their principles that they would like to see happen but aren't going to measure and so the project cannot be assessed by them - e.g. an intuitive solution)

4. what are the key stakeholders high level requirements (i.e. what capabilities do they expect the solution to deliver - e.g. the ability to offer add-on sales during the order taking process)

5. what is in scope of the work in terms of processes, organization units, locations, data, applications, technology

6. what is the scope of the work in terms of time, money, project resources (people and materials)

7. who will the stakeholders nominate for determining further high level requirements and detailed requirements (e.g. subject or domain experts, middle management of operational teams, etc)