I recently found this article: Sidewalk: Who owns Business Analysts? by Vinayak. This article talks about the confusion that Organizations as well as Business Analysts had about the BA role. I believe we've come a long way since the time when everyone treated us as aliens because they had NO IDEA what to do with us.
Slowly, the BA profession is shaping itself up. I know there are still some confusion as far as the boundary of our work and the types of BA there are. But at the minimum, when you say you are a BA, people know that you are a liaison between business and IT.
We have come a long way but we still have ways to go. This is why the work done by IIBA is very important. As activities, tasks, techniques of Business Analysis become somewhat common knowledge. More BA will be able to articulate the type of BA they are and what activities they specialize in.
