Roles

InnovaSystems Process Guidance (PG) identifies Agile and Organizational Roles for the purpose of clarification and establishing areas of responsibilities for all employees filling one or more of these Roles. In terms of the Process Guidance model, employees performing Agile and/or Organization Roles by participating in Events and/or conducting Activities that execute Process Procedures at certain times/intervals (Events) to accomplish a specified outcome, typically manifest as a software development Artifact. Agile Roles are cross-functional and non-hierarchical following industry standards and best-practices for agile methods such as Scrum, Kanban, and associated derivatives. On the other hand, Organizational Roles are aligned hierarchically, and generally follow a linear succession of related functional disciplines known as constituencies.

Agile Roles are intended to be complimentary and will typify the highest level of the Process Guidance execution tiers known as the Sprint. Agile teams are expected to be fully-capable and self-directed in their ability to accomplish the work demanded by their projects, customers, and stakeholders. By contrast, Organizational Roles are intended to apply discipline, rigor, and balance to the planning tiers of the model; namely Product and Release. Organizational Roles ensure that highly skilled individuals are directly involved in the planning and execution of the project well in advance of the Sprint tier to ensure a continuous flow of business value into the Sprint and the Agile team(s.) This application of our Organizational Roles follows a ‘Team of Peers’ model.

It is expected that employees assigned to a software development team will assume one or more agile Roles for their team. However, employees assigned to supervisory and/or senior leadership positions within a constituency would be expected to fill one or more Organizational and/or Agile Roles depending on the nature of the work and unique team needs/constraints.

Process Participation Levels

Accountable

This is the role that has ownership of the quality and end result of the activity. It is the role who is ultimately answerable for the correct and thorough completion of the activity, and the one who provides situational leadership to those responsible. There can be only one role accountable per activity. This for example may include: organizing and running meetings, organizing and running reviews, and leading the planning and/or creation of artifacts.

Responsible

The role(s) that have major participation in the activity. These are the Roles that are cooperatively executing the activity. There may be multiple Roles responsible per activity. This for example may include: Meeting participants, code reviewers, and Roles participating in cooperative planning and/or creation of artifacts.

Key Responsibility Areas

Key responsibility areas (KRAs) are used in the assignment of the most essential task and duties to employees. An important use of KRAs is in the segregation and clarification of essential duties. Every member of an InnovaSystems product team fills a role that has agreed upon KRAs for which he or she is responsible. A typical role will have between three to five KRAs. These KRAs were defined by identifying essential process activities for each role that must be performed to successfully deliver software services to our customers and users.

A listing of KRAs is provided within each of the specific role pages.

• Architecture
• Development
• Organization
• Product Management
• Program Management
• Release Ops
• Test
• User Experience (UX)
• Data Analytics

Process Guidance Version: 10.4