I enjoyed your post. My current assignment is a GOOD example of where we bridged that business to IT divide. My current employer is very large, risk-averse and loves process. Unfortunately, we also have this scary concept of IT (Business) analyst and Business analyst. They should be two BA’s just working together, however, what happens is that one draws up the reqts spec and handles the business stakeholder relationships while the other one draws up use cases and similar and handles IT stakeholder relationships.
On a recent assignment in a smaller business unit, we agreed to genuinely collaborate from Day 1. The upshot was that we have two business analysts, one on the IT payroll and the other on the business payroll. We just split the work in a sensible manner and work together constantly. I am not ‘shielded’ from the business stakeholders and he is not ‘shielded’ from the IT stakeholders.

This is a much better way of working but points out how important organisation culture is and how it can work against you.

Does anyone have similar experiences or is it just me?

Alex