Organizations are looking for expertise for a discount all over the country and around the world. Hiring is happening, but at a snail's pace and if the feedback I'm getting is any indication, it's more at the entry level than individuals with many years of experience. Employers are starting to move, but without significant money to spend they're still looking for bargains - and I expect that to continue for some time.
So, here's a trend we're seeing as a result. Hiring managers are more and more looking to combine the project manager (PM) and business analyst (BA) role, the project manager and application developer (AD) role, or the business analyst and application developer role. The most common combination seems to be with the PM and BA roles.
The question is - is this a good idea? While it will definitely work on some projects, I'm concerned that it is a bad trend overall. Especially if it is pushed to larger projects where customer management is at a premium and budgets and project schedules are larger and more difficult to manage.
Where it works best
In my experience, having a business analyst run the project works best where the engagement is shorter in nature with fewer deliverables and, therefore, a smaller budget. While some degree of project manager involvement is advisable on any size project - in my opinion - there definitely are cases on smaller projects where PM is a hard sell to the customer who is paying the bill.
Corporations looking to save some money on their own project executions and shoot for a higher degree of profitability may find it a good path to take. The business analyst is usually more hands-on technically competent than the project manager but still also very capable of being that necessary customer-facing resource when they aren't too overloaded with the tasks of the project.
Where it doesn't work
However, I would never advise an organization - or a customer - to eliminate the separate role of the project manager on a high-profile project or a new type of project that the organization has never taken on before... like perhaps serving a customer in a new industry or implementing a new technology that they are not accustomed to implementing. Anything done for the first time should be done carefully and done right.
Projects with larger budgets, a significant number of milestones and deliverables, and a complex project schedule that requires close monitoring are examples of projects that definitely need project management oversight. Also, customers who are obviously needier than your average customer or more demanding than your average customer need a project manager to control them. Putting too much responsibility on the shoulders of the business analyst who already has a major role to play will spell disaster for your project and your organization's relationship with this particular customer.