Roles alignment

Kickstart every project with an easy and effective exercise of roles & expectations! If you haven’t done so, you are probably having some misunderstandings by now. The good news is – it’s not too late.

Try to fit this in one hour. For that steer discussion to focus on problem areas.

Steps to take:

1. Prepare a whiteboard in advance. Fill it in with the roles where you have uncertainties. For remote set up feel free to use our Google Slides Template.
2. Explain the exercise to the team
3. Let everyone come up with expectations of each role and write down those where conflicts may arise.
4. Let everyone present their ideas.
5. Vote on the biggest pain points and have a discussion about them.

Illustrative Example:

For the team of three participants: a cat, a dog and an elephant, the outcome could look like this:

Real examples of responsibilities in a project team:

• who will manage stakeholders?
• who will manage team agenda?
• who will be raising a bar for a documentation?
• who will arrange the team’s agenda?
• who will facilitate the meetings?
• who will take meeting notes?
• who will manage team space?
• who will reply to incoming questions (shield the team)?
• who will re-prioritise backlog?
• who will approve the design?

Collaboration vector created by pch.vector – www.freepik.com