With the growing trend for businesses to send their software development work offshore, more and more we are hearing about companies considering offshoring PM work and even possibly BA work.

Do you think this would be successful? I have had mixed experience with development work being done offshore, but have a hard time envisioning BA work being able to be successfully accomplished this way.

I have been working as a BA in an IT company and handling mostly projects from one vertical for the last 3 years, I have good development and project management experience too.

I am looking for a change, however the dilemma is whether an IT company is a better place for a BA or a user company in the same vertical that I am focussed on?

My ultimate aim is to be a consultant in the vertical for IT requirements.

I have had many discussions, both physical and virtual, with proponents of Agile approaches about their common statement, "Don't do Requirements up-front, because they will change during development anyway."

As a Business Analyst and gatherer/analyzer/documenter of Requirements, one can imagine that I strongly disagree with this aspect of Agile as I understand it. However, I am currently having an email discussion with Peter Coffee on this topic which may provide me with fresh insight into this issue.