A very impor­tant aspect of project phases is that they enable the assign­ment of indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­ity. I know I say a lot of times that the sub­ject dis­cussed is extremely impor­tant and I hate to repeat myself, but so it is with roles. They are so impor­tant for they give direc­tion to the indi­vid­ual or to a group as a unit. Roles lend focus to the recipient.

If paired with enough breath­ing space for the indi­vid­ual to move roles stim­u­late pro­duc­tiv­ity beyond compare.

The ele­ments of roles that have to be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion are assign­ment of respon­si­bil­ity and the goalset­ting.

Assign­ment of Responsibility

If soft­ware project phases aren’t used, how do you know where to assign responsibility?

A lot of times peo­ple are wait­ing for some­one who isn’t there to pick up respon­si­bil­ity for a thing nobody wants to do all the while men­tion­ing them­selves it should be done.

That’s not going to solve any­thing, and isn’t by any stretch being respon­si­ble or pro­fes­sional. But if the assign­ment of roles is that unclear, who is respon­si­ble? One time dur­ing some project I had to get cru­cial infor­ma­tion for a cer­tain task from a per­son who we’ve found out wasn’t even part of the orga­ni­za­tion no more.  He’d left a year ear­lier and had been the “expert” on the mat­ter. Nobody felt respon­si­ble enough to do some­thing about the hole he left behind knowledge-wise. Now, you can say:

“That’s so stu­pid, peo­ple should feel more respon­si­ble about what hap­pens in their orga­ni­za­tion before things go wrong.”

That just won’t hap­pen in many cases, so instead of try­ing to make peo­ple “feel” respon­si­ble, which can be encour­aged, do what works and just “make” peo­ple responsible.

Feel­ing Respon­si­ble & Being Respon­si­ble: Moral Author­ity vs. For­mal Authority

The dif­fer­ence between “feel­ing” respon­si­ble and “being” respon­si­ble is the dif­fer­ence between moral author­ity and for­mal author­ity.

• For­mal author­ity comes with every role. If I’m called “man­ager” that usu­ally means I “man­age” a cer­tain amount of peo­ple. For­mal author­ity says I get to drive a big­ger car and have more salary. If the peo­ple I man­age actu­ally think I’m doing a good job and whether or there’s trust between me and the them is based on moral author­ity. There’s a whole lot for­mal author­ity going on in orga­ni­za­tions and a lot less moral author­ity. I can’t even describe how much more effec­tive moral author­ity is ver­sus for­mal author­ity but I’ve got a feel­ing you can relate.
• Moral author­ity has got to do with the heart, with human emo­tion, with con­nec­tion, with every­thing that keeps us going when the odds are against us. Every great leader I’ve ever come across, in the flesh or in the books I read and the movies I’ve seen always had moral author­ity. Gandhi, Vic­tor Frankl, Mar­tin Luther King, Abra­ham Lin­coln, James Stock­dale, Lance Arm­strong, Nel­son Man­dela, Win­ston Churchill you name it. How­ever, I’ve never got­ten chills of emo­tion when faced with for­mal authority.

Peo­ple have to fig­ure out for them­selves what they want to feel respon­si­ble about. They already are respon­si­ble, EVERYBODY IS! But what do YOU want to be respon­si­ble for.

Don’t kid your­self, peo­ple can’t be made to “feel” respon­si­ble if there isn’t some kind of emo­tional con­nec­tion between them and what they have to feel respon­si­ble about. So if you ask your­self: “Why don’t any­body does any­thing about so and so?” it’s the con­nec­tion that’s miss­ing. They just don’t care because there aren’t any emo­tions involved. If your the kind of per­son who want to make peo­ple care, you’ve got to have the moral author­ity your­self and you’ve got to make peo­ple con­nect. Mak­ing peo­ple con­nect pre­sup­poses the abil­ity to show empa­thy, for under­stand­ing. We’ve heard that before. So it’s true as a soft­ware designer you have the appro­pri­ate role assigned to you to get a good head start in mak­ing that connection.

The Heavy Load of Responsibility

A lot of peo­ple get scared when deal­ing with respon­si­bil­ity. That’s because they’ve only become acquainted with the neg­a­tive side of hav­ing respon­si­bil­ity. When a lot of projects don’t go well and your on one of those, it’s kind of scary to be respon­si­ble for a part of such a project. Peo­ple may begin ask­ing unpleas­ant ques­tions. Man­agers may want to talk with you.

Even when com­mon sense dic­tates that EVERYBODY makes mis­takes it’s never fun if it applies to you.

Think back about cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance and the way we deal with per­sonal fail­ure. The strength with which cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance oper­ates is ele­vated because, although there are man­agers who can con­struc­tively let peo­ple learn from their mis­takes, they are indeed few and far in between. Even if there were many of these man­agers, there are even less peo­ple will­ing to learn from there mis­takes when some­body else con­fronts them with it.

Assign­ing Roles = Man­ag­ing Expectations

Still all this is absolutely no rea­son not to assign roles. To the con­trary, roles give peo­ple some­thing to hang on to because, in com­bi­na­tion with project phases, it presents peo­ple what they need. Which is cer­tainty when some­thing is expected from then and when they can expect some­thing from some­body else. It’s also a great way to for man­agers to main­tain an overview and to put energy into those parts where it’s needed the most and the ROI will be the high­est. Not only as design­ers but as par­tic­i­pants in what­ever project, we each indi­vid­u­ally have to actively pur­sue the assign­ment of roles. We can­not do every­thing by our­selves so we will need other peo­ple doing other kinds of work. This work has to be allo­cated up front so when the time has come for you or any­one else to make use of other indi­vid­u­als they will be active and ready. This is another great exam­ple of man­ag­ing expec­ta­tions and cre­at­ing the basis for the right peo­ple to make the right choices and take action. Great teams do this. Roles are assigned, there’s trust and respect, when there’s trust there’s moral author­ity, peo­ple DOING instead of TALKING, syn­ergy, all those buzzwords.

Soft­ware Project Roles

As soft­ware design­ers you may need to have peo­ple allo­cated to roles even more. You have to ask for it before the peo­ple ful­fill­ing those roles are nec­es­sary. Mostly input from you client or end-user but as we will see in other chap­ters, soft­ware devel­op­ers might even be more cru­cial for your design. Roles are the oil on the cogs called project phases. To give you a handy list about which roles are nec­es­sary in project where TDR is being used take a look at the fol­low­ing one:

• Cus­tomer
• Com­mis­sioner
• Project Leader
• End User
• Soft­ware Designer
• Tech­ni­cal Consultant
• Soft­ware Developer
• Sys­tem Tester
• Accep­ta­tion Tester
• Eval­u­a­tor

Related posts:

1. Soft­ware Project Trait #2: Generic Power
2. Soft­ware Project Trait #1: Hall Stand
3. Soft­ware Project Foun­da­tion Necessities
4. Soft­ware Design Prepa­ra­tion & Execution