A duty is a chunk of responsibilities. One person can play many duties under a single function. Agile teams get together to build agreement of what duties people will carry out on each team.
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What's a role? Isn't that a job position?
NO!
A role is a set of duties.
A job is a person's title.
A duty is a "commitment" of activities that a person carries out.
A job function is your title, what you call yourself.
This means:
One person has one function on a team.
One function has many duties on a team.
One person has many duties on a team.
Agile teams each operate differently because they self-organize and agree to their process. Each sprint, they get together to build agreement of what duties people will play on each team through something called a RACI chart.
Different companies and different work environments require different people to do different duties. You may find yourself in a UX design position but expected to play a Scrum Master duty, or a Business Analyst duty. This is common! Take a look at job title descriptions and the daily responsibilities to understand what duties they expect you to play.
This chart shows the breakdown of responsibilities between cross-functional team positions on Tech Fleet project training. This is modeled after industry standard norms so that people get the real industry training they need.
Product Strategy function == Scrum Master duties + Business Analyst duties + Product Owner duties + Product Manager duties + UX Research duties
UX Design function == UX design duties + UX Research duties
UX Research function == UX research duties + UX Research duties
UX Writing function == UX writing duties + UX Research duties
Project Management function == Scrum Master duties + Project Manager duties
Development function == Front-end developer duties + Back-end developer duties + QA duties
Solution Architecture position == Information Security duties + Solutions architect duties
You should not stick to only your job responsibilities when you are on an Agile team. All strong agile teams are "cross-functional", meaning, they all work together across their different roles and functions. Product people do research with UX researchers; UX researchers collaborate in UX design activities with UX designers; UX designers collaborate in product requirements with the Product strategy team.
The more collaborative a team is across functions, the more decision making prowess it has on its own. No one should tell them what to do or how to work or how not to work. They need to make their own collective decision. Learn more about cross-functional teams in the Agile Handbook:
Tech Fleet maintains training materials to help people understand what kinds of responsibilities are needed for different cross-functional roles. Here's the Role Dashboard showing the details. This includes the expectations about daily tasks, tools, skills, and deliverables necessary to carry out a role (i.e. a set of responsibilities).
Here's the Tech Fleet Position Dashboard showing all of the information you need to know about different team positions in Tech Fleet training. This includes the expectations about roles, daily tasks, tools, skills, and deliverables necessary to carry out a position on a team.
