Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
In the PMP template was a section that identified required roles, names of
people assigned to roles, and skills required. During the development of the
template, and in the ensuing training, there was discussion as to the need to
list skills required. In small Agile organizations often the allocation of people
to projects and the assurance those people have appropriate skills happen
informally and are often not written down. But as organizations grow and
multiple projects are executing in parallel, it is not uncommon for some of
these projects to run into unanticipated difficulties, leading Senior Manage-
ment to make priority staffing decisions that modify the initial planned
staffing. This often leads to key personnel on one project being reassigned to
support a different project.
As organizations grow, leaders can easily forget the rationale for the initial
selection of an individual to a given project, which often includes specific skill
needs or experience specifically related to that project. Even the people on the
project could forget why the original decision was made. Further, as the project
evolves there might be changes in the requirements that can affect skill needs.
This provides a good rationale for writing down the skill needs of people, pro-
viding backup information related to why they were selected for the project.
Some objected during the initial workshops to defining roles in the organiza-
tion, based on a fear that people would be pigeonholed. One of the reasons
many people enjoy working in small organizations is because they get to do
a range of tasks that often are not available in larger organizations where per-
sonnel are hired into individual departments with a limited charter of
responsibilities.
I explained that our intent in defining roles was not to change the culture of
the organization that encouraged and supported individuals helping others
and taking on additional assignments. The value in defining roles was to
raise the awareness of work that had to be done. A person could take on mul-
tiple roles and that was fine. By defining roles with a list of responsibilities,
management would have better visibility of the resource needs of the organi-
zation. It can be a very good thing for people to take on multiple roles within
an organization, but it is also important to have visibility to ensure we
understand when individuals might be taking on too much work, risking the
overall goals of the organization
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6. Roles and responsibilities are also discussed later in the topic in the DART case study. Another reason
defining roles and responsibilities in an Agile organization is important is because key support roles can
easily be missed. By support, I mean the roles of Quality Assurance and Configuration Management. The
subject of Quality Assurance is addressed in Chapter 7 in the GEAR case study.
