The step of the application lifecycle management (ALM) cycle that requires the business analyst to study current business processes, gather requirements, and analyze them is plan. ALM is a process that helps manage changes to an application from planning to deployment and beyond. ALM has six steps: plan, develop, test, build release, test release, and release. The plan step is where the business analyst studies current business processes, gathers requirements, and analyzes them to understand what needs to be changed or improved in an application. The plan step also involves defining objectives, scope, budget, timeline, deliverables, roles and responsibilities for a project. The develop step is where developers create or modify code or declarative components based on the requirements gathered in the plan step. The test step is where testers verify that the code or declarative components work as expected and meet quality standards using various testing techniques and tools. The build release step is where developers package all code or declarative components into a release that can be deployed to other environments using various deployment techniques and tools. The test release step is where end users test the release in a sandbox or test environment to verify that it works as intended, and what was originally requested is actually being delivered. The release step is where the release is deployed to production and made available to end users. References: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/application-lifecycle-and-development-models/understand-what-application-lifecycle-management-is