In the DSDM Atern project delivery framework roles fit into the following three categories:

• Project Level
• Solution Development Team, and
• Other

The diagram below shows how an Atern team is structure:

For example, in the Solution Development Team we have the roles of the Business Ambassador and the Business Analyst(s).

I appreciate that the Business Ambassador's role is more focused on the day-to-day communication between the project and the business whereas the Business Analyst role facilitates the communication between the developers (technical roles) and other business roles.

There are many organisations that insist on assigning these roles to two different people. However, in smaller organisations where the resources are limited in all categories -i.e., there is no enough people to fulfil every business role; could the same person be assigned to both roles?

What are the risks or limitations of merging these two roles? Are there any (other) roles that lend themselves to being covered by the same people? Are there any that definitely shouldn't be covered by the same person?