Part 5 | Defining Your Hierarchy - Describe What Your People Do

What is a Role?

Roles describe what people do.? This isn’t the creation of job descriptions.? After all, you likely already have those, and they are typically very detailed making it impossible to use in this type of activity.?

What you want here is to create a simple description for each role so that you can ensure to stay focused on what the person is expected to accomplish.

Within any organization, there are Roles.? In defining ownership for a transformation, it is less important to know exactly who, by name, is responsible for the execution of a Step or who has ownership of a Process.? Individual names can change but the Role of the person who resides within it typically does not.

In defining your Hierarchy we utilize both the actual individual name and their Role.? The individual is important so that we know who to go to get questions answered.? However, the Role is what we will use in determining where resources and process updates are necessary.

Properties of a Role

• Name – The name of the Role.
• Description – A robust description of the Role's purpose.
• Number of Current Resources by Team - The number of people within a Team who have been assigned to the Role.? You will use this during the analysis part of the process for calculating velocity and capacity.

Building Your Hierarchy

Finally, you can complete your hierarchy definition by adding Roles to each of your Teams.?

You will already start to notice where improvements can be made in your organization.? Unless you feel that the company is at risk, resist the urge to start making changes.? At this point, you only have half of the picture.? Making changes now might have long-term negative impacts on other parts of your organization.? Also, any changes now would equate to just "fiddling with things" to achieve short-term gains.? The goal of a transformation should always be long-term, sustainable, and well-thought-out solutions.?