One of the biggest challenges faced in my career as a BA is that I seem to be brought into projects too late to make the kind of impact I know I can make.

For instance, because I report to someone in IT, I tend to only be brought on board after the IT project has been initiated, scoped out and estimated. The BA has had little-to-no involvement in the development of the business case or scope definition for the project. This usually results in one of two things happening:
1) the solution proposed in the project scope is ill-conceived, but I'm forced to do the best with what I have...or
2) the solution proposed in the project scope is ill-conceived, but I make the case that we need to back up and re-evaluate the initial scope/proposed solution against business need and expectations.

The latter was an option at my last company, but at my new gig it seems unlikely due to the number of management layers.

What do other people experience? How do you convince management to get BAs involved sooner? Do you have responsibility for anything in the IIBA BABOK "Enterprise Analysis" knowledge area? Is this not an issue for most people? If anyone has had experience selling this idea to management (IT and Biz) it would be great to hear about it.