1.   Great summary of a Business Analyst. I add some information from PMI  stating that he understands the procedures and identify where improvement is needed. Your information as the analyst working with staff,senior management,stakeholders, and even users. This is affordable in lrage corporations, but be beyond reach of small firms. I guess consulting an Analyst on a one time basis may be a choice. Do you think a company employee, such as a project manager could carry out this role?

“Description: The business analyst is responsible for analyzing and modeling existing business processes. The goal of business process analysis is to understand and document current business procedures and identify areas for improvement.”( PMI, 2021).

2.  Using a nuetral facilitator insures that the direction of the conversation will not tend in a biased direction.  As they say, the facilitator doesn’t “have a dog in the hunt.”   However, having a nuetral facilitator does not mean that the facilitator is ignorant of the subject of the group meeting.  A highly technical conversation would require a ficilitator with some common background, else the flow of questions might be impeaded. The best example I can think of in this regard is a group meeting conducted by a marketing company seeking input on a current or proposed product.  The facilitator is a contracted person and has no particular vested interest in the outcome of the meeting, but is responsible for managing the conversation.  This person would likely have receved some background on the subject of the meeting in advance.
3. Writing an effective requirement is an important factor in determining if a clear picture of the project will be portrayed.  It should act as the starting point for the project and it should also include how it will be used. Here is what modescreate.com defines as a requirement.  
“An effective requirements management process is crucial for the success of a product or project and involves collecting, documenting, analyzing, refining, and prioritizing the requirements, building end-to-end traceability, providing a means to track requirements changes, and foster communication among the stakeholders. The goal of each step in this process is to ensure that the product development or project goals are successfully met.” (http://moduscreate.com)
 Below are the 9 tips to write a better requirement;
 1.Understand the user needs.
2.Requirements should be unambiguous.
3 Requirements should be simple, specific, c 
8.Requirements should be properly categorized.
9. Requirements should be traceable.
Chris
https://moduscreate.com/blog/9-tips-write-better-requirements/oncise, and comprehensive.
4.  Great post! I agree a requirement can make or break the success of a project. Thus it is important to keep requirements clear and explicit in their language.