How to run a roles and responsibilities workshop

TL;DR

Summary

A 3-hour session, very early in the project, to define each person’s responsibilities and activities (what they do, what they don’t want to do, and whether it’s even theirs to do).

Goal

The Roles and Responsibilities workshop helps everyone find their place.

Program (3h)

Before the workshop, prep is needed.

15 min: Setting up the room, round of introductions, kickoff, expectations

15 min: Walkthrough of a typical Agile team’s roles and responsibilities

30 min: Picking your role

15 min: Writing sticky notes by role

90 min: Presenting your sticky notes

15 min: Creating ancillary roles

Group composition

• the whole team
• facilitator

Setting the stage

• Print the roles, responsibilities, and activities (using the SlideShare below) and hand them out to each participant. https://fr.slideshare.net/AntoinePez/rles-responsabilits-et-rituels-dune-quipe-agile-138514200 (in French)
• Write all the roles and responsibilities on sticky notes and post them on the wall (pairing each responsibility with the right role).

Summary of roles and responsibilities

• Sponsor
• Upholding the company vision
• Political context with other entities Product Manager
• Product vision
• Product strategy
• Product growth Product Owner
• Product features
• Development prioritization
• Functional quality of the product
• User satisfaction
• Team well-being Developer
• Code in production
• Technical quality of the product Technical Leader
• Technical ecosystem
• Development practices
• Architecture
• Security UX Researcher
• Knowledge of user behavior
• Connecting with users Designer
• Interfaces
• Visual identity
• Navigation Ops
• Reliability of production releases
• Environments Coach
• Continuous process improvement
• Communication within the team

Walkthrough of a typical Agile team’s roles and responsibilities (15 min)

Walk through the definitions of roles, responsibilities, and activities. Then walk through the responsibilities by role, posted on the wall.

DEFINITIONS

Role

A set of responsibilities that can be taken on by a person or a group. A responsibility cannot be assigned to two roles at once.

Responsibilities

Areas in which the person involved:

• is autonomous to handle the topic from end to end
• is accountable for their actions, in particular when something goes wrong

Activities

The set of human operations that flow from responsibilities. They split into 3:

• Functional: for business and user topics
• Organizational: for topics that deal with the team’s internal or external organization
• Technical: for topics that touch development

A person or group that takes on a role can step away from an activity, but not from a responsibility tied to that role (you can delegate, but under your own responsibility toward the other roles).

Picking your role (30 min)

The facilitator asks each person to write their name on a sticky note and place it next to the role they think they hold.

If some roles aren’t already shown, the facilitator asks the people involved to name a role and write it down. Example: “I’m Alan, and I’m an architect. It’s not in the walkthrough. So I’m adding an Architect sticky note and putting the Alan note next to it.”

Then comes a discussion to check whether everyone is comfortable with the responsibilities laid out. If not, there’s a debate and you add, remove, or move responsibilities to the relevant roles.

Writing sticky notes by role (15 min)

The facilitator writes in an empty space the 3 prompts to fill in about activities:

• I have to do …
• I don’t want to do …
• Is it on me to do …

Each participant has 10 minutes to write on sticky notes:

• the activities they have to do
• the activities they don’t want to do
• the activities where they’re not sure whether it’s on them to do them

They aren’t required to stick to the proposed model: there can be other activities.

RULES: Write in capitals, 1 idea per sticky note, and start with a verb in the infinitive.

Presenting your sticky notes (1h30)

Each participant takes turns presenting their notes by sticking them in the right column under their name. The 3 columns are:

• I have to do …
• I don’t want to do …
• Is it on me to do …

The point isn’t to debate at this stage. If there are remarks, the facilitator subtly points out that we’ll get to them once everyone has had their turn.

Once the presentations are done, the facilitator focuses first on the notes in the “Is it on me to do” columns. Their goal: clear all of those notes by redistributing them to the other columns.

Then they invite the group to share their feedback on the result. The facilitator runs the debate and adjusts responsibilities and activities accordingly.

GOAL: that everyone is comfortable with the role they take on. A photo of the role, responsibilities, and activities will be taken at the end of the workshop.

Creating ancillary roles (15 min)

Once the group agrees on the split of roles, responsibilities, and activities, it has to create the ancillary roles, i.e. the roles outside the “core team” for people who weren’t at the workshop. Write down:

• the name of the role
• the responsibilities of that role
• a name if someone is already identified

Before wrapping up, identify which roles are part of the core team. One way to determine this is to ask: am I dedicated at least 3 days a week to this product?

In a blank space, write down two distinct zones, “Core team” and “Ancillary roles”, and place each role’s name accordingly.

By the end, you’ll have the names of every role on the team, the associated responsibilities and activities. Everyone present at the workshop will have picked their role.

Going further

• The Mission / Vision workshop: to run before defining the roles
• OKRs: to track each role’s objectives
• The retrospective: to adjust the roles regularly