In a large project, there may be many people who have some role in the creation and approval of project deliverables. Sometimes this is pretty straightforward, such as one person writing a document and one person approving it. In other cases, there may be many people who have a hand in the creation, and others that need to have varying levels of approval. The Responsibility Matrix is a tool used to define the general responsibilities for each role on a project. The matrix can then be used to communicate the roles and responsibilities to the appropriate people associated with the team. This helps set expectations and ensures people know what is expected from them.
C - Create
I - Provide Input
R - Review
A - Approve
N - Notify
M - Manage
Let’s say Product Owner wants to add a new functionality to the product. Typically business team or product owner provides requirements. Requirement document should also have its own responsibility matrix defined. However since this is architect's blog I would highlight the responsibility matrix for architecture or design activity for creating design artifacts.
In a large project typically you have one or more enterprise architects and one or more application architects. However it’s important to define the primary ownership of new feature design to one enterprise architect who looks at the overall product and one application architect of the area where the new feature is being added. In this case, I would define the responsibilities as follows:
C - Creator of the design is one application architect whose application is largely affected by the new feature. This architect is primarily responsible for creating a design document.
R - All other architects review the design document for design-flaw, best practices or company standards compliance, integration issues with their applications etc. In other words, all other architects have review responsibility.
I - Business Analysts, Project Managers and Product Owners holds responsibility of providing inputs here. It is critical to get inputs from them as far as explaining the business problem. In many cases I have experienced that whenever responsibility matrix is not clearly defined, PMs, business analysts or product owners start providing design suggestions or sometimes forces a specific design. This is usually as case when these roles have some technical background in their career. They remember how they have done it in the past and start dictating how it should be done or starts questioning the architects. This is why responsibility matrix plays such a crucial role in large projects and conflicts can be avoided.
A - Finally enterprise architect has to make a call on the design and approve it. It’s important to have this played by single person to manage accountability.
N - Once the design is approved, Project Manager should be notified. The important contribution of project manager here is to do scope management, prioritization and risk management. All project managers know what this means.
M - Delivery team including technical managers, team leads and developers then manages it to take it to the further level of creating low level design, provide estimates to PMs and fit it into release plan. Finally implement the feature based on the agreed upon release plan.
Again one can ask whose responsibility is to create responsibility matrix? IMO it’s a team’s job but primary owner is project manager. If you have reached this line, thanks for reading this blog post. Please provide your comments.
C - Create
I - Provide Input
R - Review
A - Approve
N - Notify
M - Manage
Let’s say Product Owner wants to add a new functionality to the product. Typically business team or product owner provides requirements. Requirement document should also have its own responsibility matrix defined. However since this is architect's blog I would highlight the responsibility matrix for architecture or design activity for creating design artifacts.
In a large project typically you have one or more enterprise architects and one or more application architects. However it’s important to define the primary ownership of new feature design to one enterprise architect who looks at the overall product and one application architect of the area where the new feature is being added. In this case, I would define the responsibilities as follows:
C - Creator of the design is one application architect whose application is largely affected by the new feature. This architect is primarily responsible for creating a design document.
R - All other architects review the design document for design-flaw, best practices or company standards compliance, integration issues with their applications etc. In other words, all other architects have review responsibility.
I - Business Analysts, Project Managers and Product Owners holds responsibility of providing inputs here. It is critical to get inputs from them as far as explaining the business problem. In many cases I have experienced that whenever responsibility matrix is not clearly defined, PMs, business analysts or product owners start providing design suggestions or sometimes forces a specific design. This is usually as case when these roles have some technical background in their career. They remember how they have done it in the past and start dictating how it should be done or starts questioning the architects. This is why responsibility matrix plays such a crucial role in large projects and conflicts can be avoided.
A - Finally enterprise architect has to make a call on the design and approve it. It’s important to have this played by single person to manage accountability.
N - Once the design is approved, Project Manager should be notified. The important contribution of project manager here is to do scope management, prioritization and risk management. All project managers know what this means.
M - Delivery team including technical managers, team leads and developers then manages it to take it to the further level of creating low level design, provide estimates to PMs and fit it into release plan. Finally implement the feature based on the agreed upon release plan.
Again one can ask whose responsibility is to create responsibility matrix? IMO it’s a team’s job but primary owner is project manager. If you have reached this line, thanks for reading this blog post. Please provide your comments.
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