Demand Delivery - Teams and Roles in Depth

The Group or Domain Owner

This grouping level of Product Owner is very similar to The Product Owner mentioned next with some small differences. The Grouping Owner is responsible for working with all the Product Owners with in the individual teams in the group to create the delivery plan or game plan for the group.

Grouping level product owners needs to ensure that all the Product Owners are aligned to deliviering tAlso The Product Owner is the champion for the Business, representing the customer's interest and focused on understanding the business and market requirements. Bridging the communication gap between the team and its stakeholders, writes customer centric items (generally user stories), prioritises them based on the importance and dependencies, adds them to the backlog, demonstrates the solution to key stakeholders, announces releases (this could even be an email of a small iterative release, or a big bang marketing release), negotiates priorities, scope funding (generally with help from the Scrum Master). Currently in Telstra some of these functions are shared with the BA's, Team Leads and Project or Iteration managers.

The Development Team or The Team (a collection of people)

All though the term Development team is used in Scrum and other agile ways of working it does not always mean all the people in the team are software engineers (people who write code). The Development Team is a team of people typically between 5-15 (15 being the upper limit) individuals that have a simple goal of working together to develop the outcome or product.

In Agile Scrum the team is self-organising, meaning it is the team members and not outsiders' role to identify which competencies are required (or lacking) to achieve their goal. At this point if the Team decides that an Architect is a skill set the team needs then so be it. Typically, you will find that the Lead Developer has the knowledge of the individuals required to make the team, but ultimately, it's still a team decision.

Also, with in the Scrum model there is encouragement of a multi-disciplinary culture where roles overlap (one of the reasons it is also very popular with start-ups), The purpose here is to give people a much better understanding of the value of other roles in the team as well as discourage egos within individuals. You might have heard people talking about the T model of Skills for people in a team, multi-disciplinary with deep knowledge in at least one area.

The PRODUCT OWNER

Also The Product Owner is the champion for the Business, representing the customer's interest and focused on understanding the business and market requirements. Bridging the communication gap between the team and its stakeholders, writes customer centric items (generally user stories), prioritises them based on the importance and dependencies, adds them to the backlog, demonstrates the solution to key stakeholders, announces releases (this could even be an email of a small iterative release, or a big bang marketing release), negotiates priorities, scope funding (generally with help from the Scrum Master). Currently in Telstra some of these functions are shared with the BA's, Team Leads and Project or Iteration managers.

The product owner also owns the responsibility of managing the teams backlog ensuring that everyone understands and agrees the with the features in the backlog. Ultimately the product owner becomes the decision maker as they own the backlog. This where a lot of organisational challenges start, it is also why it is extremely important the product owner represents the customers/stakeholders that the solution/product is being built for and focuses on optimising the value of The Development Team's output. This role via the backlog should be stopping 'un-needed wants' or 'low-priority/low-value wants' being pumped into scope which leads to inflated projects/products/costs.

  • Understands product vision
  • Defines the features of the Product, decides on the release date and content
  • Is responsible for the profitability of the Product (ROI)
  • Prioritises features according to market value
  • Can change features and priority every Sprint
  • Accepts or rejects work results
  • negotiates Acceptance Criteria for work results

The SCRUM MASTER

Is a role is generally the one that, in conjunction with the Product Owner, replaces the Project Manager as there is no need for a Project Manager directly with in a Scrum team. This role can be challenging as it is facilitator for the team and the Product Owner, ensuring that the team follows the processes that the team has agreed upon; remembering different teams may have agreed on different processes. Some examples of the processes/ceremonies include daily stand-ups, time boxing meetings, removing blockers that prevent the developers from continuing with their work, retrospectives, grooming sessions, sprint estimate and planning sessions. Also, the Scrum master is responsible for the sprint backlog (the work that will be completed in a sprint, which is driven by the team backlog managed by the Product Owner).

In the current Telstra environment this individual would also work closely with the product owner to do the reporting (burn down, burn up, velocity, etc) as well as budget reporting, they also provide coaching to the team, Product Owners, and even Externals to the Team.

Auxiliary Roles

The PROJECT MANGER

There are cases where there is a need for a project manager, but this is not with in a team, when there is large, highly distributed multi-team environments with high-risk profiles, complex processes and complex governance. Projects with multiple scrum teams divided by release or component need that additional layer of co-ordination as team generally focus on their tasks and there are likely to be non-agile dependencies' within and without the project which don't work to the rhythm of the scrum teams. Enterprise level projects can involve a series of initiation activities before the Scrum-based delivery gets started, this critically includes what is NOT in scope, some architectural and technology decisions, project managers can bring a wealth of planning skills.

Its important to note that this are Agile Project Managers and need to fit with in the Agile philosophy of delegating as much detail into the team(s) as possible, not the traditional method of 'command and control' style of project management

This leave 3 main areas of responsibility for the Project Manager

◦ a buffer to the outside environment

◦ a support to the team

◦ a co-ordinator.

The ARCHITECT

Generally, an architect is at the group level and becomes part of the support crew for the teams of the group, in more complex problem spaces it is also possible that an architect is a member within The Development Team, there are also situations where there would not be enough work within one team so often the Architects are expected to work across multiple teams and even projects. In these types of scenarios, the Architect can end up outside of the Scrum team be either a Stakeholder or a consultant to the Scrum team.

For example, an enterprise, system or infrastructure architect may have have concerns or feature requirements related to what is being developed. They may want to ensure a system complies with an organisation standard or fits an architectural strategy, in these cases they will be looking to influence the Product Owner's decision about what gets put in the backlog and how it is prioritised thus making the Architect a stakeholder.

MORE ROLES to Define

  • coach
  • Project manager
  • delivery specialist