BA Role - A must or just an add-on?

Recently I came across this cartoon on one of the BA related sites. This set me thinking...I have experienced that in many of the projects a BA's role is considered to be just an add-on for the sake of project planning. That is sometimes the general attitude towards BA's in, I would say many of the organizations. But is the BA shoes really something in which anybody could fit in?

The question can be answered from a few different perspectives. A BA's role generally gains importance based on what phase of the project they are working on. Also an experienced BA is always a very valuable addition to any project team as they bring lot of insights by doing in-depth analysis and research. Also if the BA is proficient on the technical side then there is nothing like it. They can help in many more areas outside of the defined 'BA Zone'.

Like I discussed in my previous post, a Business Analyst generally has to perform more roles than one, then why is the BA role itself considered to be complimentary? In my experience myself including some of the other BAs I have worked with have performed valuable tasks which were of great value to the project like:
- In-depth analysis and representation of existing system logic
- Additional research in other lines of business to draw out functionalities that might have been missed
- Providing excellent end user training which saves a lot of Training dollars (as there is no need for a separate Training team to do the same)
- Digging into the features of any new tools adapted and then training the rest of the team on it
- Playing a very valuable role during the System Testing and Production testing phases where BA's perform tasks like documentation of system test cases, testing and reporting of bugs, set up of test data and also providing suggestions to the IT team on fixing the bugs
- Coming up with highly intuitive 'diagrams' of various Systems and Business processes
- Creation valuable documentation which are the go-to assets even months / years later for getting knowledge on any of the application / system

The above are some of the ways in which a Business Analyst adds value and I can vouch that there are many more.

So in conclusion, I would like to state that a BA role is not just an add-on. It just depends on the project manager / coordinator on how well they can utilize a BA and not just limit them.

Basically a BA role has no limits defined!