Commitment vs. Job Function vs. People on Teams
A role is a chunk of responsibilities. One person can play many roles. Agile teams get together to build agreement of what roles people will play on each team. Read more about Roles below.
Last updated
A role is a chunk of responsibilities. One person can play many roles. Agile teams get together to build agreement of what roles people will play on each team. Read more about Roles below.
Last updated
What's a role? Isn't that a job position?
NO!
A role is a "commitment" of a chunk of responsibilities.
A job function is your title, what you call yourself.
One person has one job function on a team.
One function can have many role commitments on a team.
One person can have many different role commitments 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 roles people will play on each team through something called a RACI chart.
Different companies and different work environments require different people to do different roles. You may find yourself in a UX design position but expected to play a Scrum Master role, or a Business Analyst role. This is common! Take a look at job title descriptions and the daily responsibilities to understand what roles 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 commitment + Business Analyst commitment + Product Owner commitment + Product Manager commitment + UX Research commitment
UX Design function == UX design commitment + UX Research commitment
UX Research function == UX research commitment + UX Research commitment
UX Writing function == UX writing commitment + UX Research commitment
Project Management function == Scrum Master commitment + Project Manager commitment
Development function == Front-end developer commitment + Back-end developer commitment + QA commitment
Solution Architecture position == Information Security commitment + Solutions architect commitment
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.
