Holly is the business analyst for her organization. Holly encourages teamwork and open communications among the business analysis team and the stakeholders. She wants stakeholders to drop by her offic

Informal communications carry a genuine and well-recognized risk in business analysis - the absence of documentation can cause requirements to be lost, misunderstood, or inconsistently communicated across stakeholder groups.

Stakeholders and team members communicating directly is generally encouraged in collaborative environments and is not the primary danger of informal communications.

Without formal documentation, stakeholders who are not present for an informal conversation will miss information that was discussed, and there is no written record to resolve conflicting interpretations later. This inconsistency directly leads to ambiguous requirements and a weaker requirements baseline, which can cause solution defects or rework downstream.

Roles, authority, and ownership of a solution are established through formal project governance artifacts such as a RACI matrix or project charter, not through the communication style chosen by the business analyst.