An article looking at the BA role in the context of Agile methods has been posted at Better Projects. 

Read it here

The article is written by a developer so it's a fresh perspective on the BA role over here.  And be sure to check the comments for some other interesting articles.

I looked it through and repeat my opinion that I wrote in another topic... If we rephrase Cockburn - "Each project and team should have their own methodology" It means you should balance between speed of development (minimum docs) and heavy documentation. If you develop small program by request you can agile Project as much as you can (never skip the main practices of Agile - Iterations, TTD etc) and the role of Analysts can be done by Senior Developer or Project Owner. If you develop big program or replicated product then you should write more requirements and Analysts will be very appreciated here.

I can recommend to study Agile Modeling web site by Scott W. Ambler

To Eduardo,

As a BA, I am either on a project or I am not. I don't need to be "welcomed" as a perceived outsider.

To all,

The article itself is OK, much of what I have seen or said myself. The key line in there is "not all solutions in involve IT". Lets build on that, shall we:

• Not all IT Solutions need new software.
• Not all software-based solutions are developed in-house.
• Not all software solutions involve actual new software --> meaning COST or SaS
• Not all software work is new software --> maintenance and enhancements

In fact, it has been a long-standing statistic that 75% of an IT departments's 'development' budget is actually spent on maintenance and ehancement of existing systems. That leaves 25% (if you are lucky) for new systems. I have seen about a half-dozen new s/w dev projects in my jobs over the past 20 years, since in-house dev really started to slide, but I have seen dozens of software package implementations. So, I have seen many more projects without develepers than I have without BAs. I have never seen a serious project without a BA. You wanna prototype something, or try some cool new stuff for a while without me, go ahead. But as soon as management wants the new stuff to actually do something useful, they call me.

So my fellow BAs, not to worry, we are useful today, tomorrow and for the future to come.... Dave W