This post you will know about the peoples with different roles involved within an organization specifically for developing software or application. This software development can divide into multiple project teams based on the area of expertise, modules and do development in parallel in multiple project teams. These projects teams management for functional or operational taken care by management people like IT manager, Functional Manager, Delivery Manager, etc.

Project Team

A project team may consist of full-time and part-time resources assigned to analysis, designing, development, and testing to the deliverable of projects. As a team, these peoples have below common responsibilities that make a project team more effective.

Responsibilities

• A clear understanding of work needs to complete.
• Plan the activities in detail and do the assignment to the team.
• Complete the assigned work in the budget, timeline and meet the quality expectation.
• Inform management proactively about issues, scope changes, risk, and quality concerns.
• Use flexible methodologies and constant changes to get the best possible results.
• There should not be any communication gap because that can impact their understanding of the project, roles, and responsibilities of other team members.
• Maintain a mutually supportive and foster work environment where team members understand each other’s efforts.

A project team can be under a functional organization that can involve members from the same organization or from other cross-functional organizations. To make an effective team every team member should know their responsibilities based on assigned roles.

In an organization, the software development team size and roles decide based on some common factors like outline project requirements, budget, and timeline. These requirements decide to type of resources required to fulfill those requirements within the timeline.

Generally, in software development project people involve having these roles, sometimes one role responsibility can merge with other roles also depend on organization size and budget of the project:

1. Client/Customer
2. Client Project Manager
3. Project Manager
4. Software Delivery Manager
5. Product Owner
6. Functional Manager
7. Business Analyst
8. Software Architect
9. QA Manager
10. Change Manager
11. Process Analyst
12. Test Engineer
13. Software Developer/ Programer
14. Subject Matter Expert
15. Database Administrator
16. Designer
17. Solution Architect

1. Client/Customer

These are people that are direct beneficiaries of a product or project or service is being undertaken. These people are also called “customers” if they are internal to the organization then referred to as clients.

2. Client Project Manager

In a large project, Client Project Manager is the primary contact person that is designated as project manager for work on the client-side. If an IT manager needs any support on the client-side then Client Project manager would be responsible for those. The IT project manager and client project manager would be peers to build and implement complete solutions.

3. Project Manager

The project manager is for developing a plan, manage teams, assign tasks to project team members, recruit the right resources, lead, monitor and determine the methods and technologies to be utilized.

Responsibilities

• Develop a project plan.
• Manage deliverables according to the plan.
• Recruit project staff.
• Lead and manage the project team.
• Determine the methodology used on the project.
• Establish a project schedule and determine each phase.
• Assign tasks to project team members.
• Provide regular updates to upper management.

4. Software Delivery Manager

Delivery Manager takes care of project progress, budget and complete project delivery within the timeline.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary contact person for client-related queries and concerns.
• Review and Analyze customer orders, coordinate delivery activities set delivery priorities and make schedule adjustments to meet timely.
• Build positive, productive and healthy working relationships with customers for business growth.
• Analyze progress of development, defects and troubleshoot delivery issues in a timely fashion.
• Manage a delivery team to ensure delivery of projects in a timely and accurate.
• Oversee the progress of the delivery team and provide direction and guidance as required.
• Perform workload assignments and resource allocation according to delivery requirements.
• Ensure that the team maintains a high level of skills competence and operational excellence.
• Evaluate the performance at team members and determine training needs
• delivery goals
  • Evaluate the process  to achieve cost-effectiveness and time saving,
  • Perform customer negotiations for delivery rates.
  • Make critical business decisions to meet customer expectations.
  • Develop scope and budget for delivery projects.
  • Report project delivery status to customers and develop the required delivery artifacts.

5. Product Owner

Product owner term used in Agile Methodology. This person is the leader responsible for maximizing the value of the products created by the scrum development team.

Responsibilities

• Acting as a primary person to coordinate with the client.
• Define the vision of the project/product.
• Anticipating client needs.
• Managing the product backlog according to prioritizing needs.
• Overseeing development stages.
• Evaluate product progress at each iteration.

6. Functional manager

The functional manager takes care of working closely with the team members, ensuring project progress and manage ongoing responsibilities for the project.

Responsibilities

• Assign projects to the team.
• Work with the employee to set and coach on career goals.
• Gather information from other Project Managers to write the evaluation.
• Evaluate person based on work standard and performance and if a person wants to continue doing it (providing opportunities for growth)

7. Operational Manager

An operations manager is a senior role. It’s the job of overseeing organization is running as expected, check the production of goods, meeting client expectations, etc.

Responsibilities

• Plan effective strategies, processes, policies in support of organizational goals and vision for the financial well-being of the company.
• Coordinate, manage and monitor the workings of various departments in the organization and also evaluate performance.
• Review financial statements and data. Utilize financial data to improve profitability.
• Prepare and control operational budgets and Control inventory.
• Plan the use of human resources utilization, recruitment, and placement of required staff.
• Establish organizational structures and work schedules.
• Delegate tasks and accountabilities.
• Coordinate and monitor the work of various departments involved in the production, warehousing, pricing, and distribution of goods and also provide facilities required.
• Managing quality assurance programs.
• Setting and reviewing budgets and managing cost.
• Research new technologies and alternative methods of efficiency.
• Overseeing inventory, distribution of goods and facility layout.

8. Business Analyst

The Business Analyst is responsible for ensuring that the requirements of the clients are captured and documented correctly before a solution is developed and implemented. They verify the project deliverables to ensure that they meet the client’s requirements.

In many companies, Business Analysts also called as Analyst, Business Systems Analyst, Systems Analyst or Requirements Analyst.

Responsibilities

• Bridge the gap between IT development and the business using data.
• Assist in defining the project and translating requirements to the team.
• Gather requirements from business units or users.
• Document technical and business requirements.
• Requirement specification document.
• Performing acceptance testing.
• Defining the scope of the project.
• Determine requirements, Analytics to assess processes and deliver data-driven recommendations and reports to executives and stakeholders

9. Software Architect

A Software Architects design and develop software systems and applications based on client requirements.

Responsibility

• Identifying business requirements clients and stakeholders on the project.
• Designing the entire software system based on the received requirements from customers.
• Choose the system architecture and each individual component of this system at a high level.
• Choosing the right tools, technologies, and framework for the implementation of each component and connections between the components.
• Writing project documentation and its support in a timely manner so that the overall organization can make progress before it’s complete.
• communicate with stakeholders to make sure their application needs are being met.
• Resolve technical problems.
• Architectural Review.
• Code Review.
• Design model and also verify the qualities and performance are being met.

10. QA Manager

The quality assurance manager works with other QA (Quality Assurance) staff such as Functional Analyst and Solutions Architect to verify that the product meets the client’s requirements.

Responsibilities

• QA converts the requirements and design documents into a set of testing cases and scripts.
• Verify that the system meets the client’s needs.
• Make Test Plan for test cases and scripts.
• Make Test Plan documents as simple which provides an overview of each test case.
• Use test cases and script to validate so that the system will not have any unexplained error.
• Take approval from SME (Subject Matter Expert)for test plan and scripts and represents the criteria to reach a project closing.
• Check all the test cases and script passed test status and met acceptance criteria.

Note :

• Test scripts are step-by-step instructions on what needs to execute, what to look for, and what will result.
• Test cases can be created with nearly on input from the architecture or design and the test scripts. Test cases are specifically shown, how a problem was solved by the software development team and it requires an understanding of not only the requirements, but also the architecture, design, and detailed design.

11. Change manager

These are a group of people usually do decision about the budget, requirements, and timeline of the project.

12. Process Analyst

Process Analyst includes process review and improvement, relationship management, product documentation, and support. The business process analyst is responsible for the business architecture and maintains artifacts.

Responsibilities

• Process Review and Enhancement.
• Documentation, Training, and Support.
• Stakeholder Relationship Management.
• Understand customer and user requirements, strategies, and goals.
• Assess the situation of the customer organization where the projects will be deployed.
• Facilitate modeling of the customer organization.
• Discuss to management and facilitate a business engineering effort, if needed.
• Perform a cost/benefit analysis for any suggested changes in the customer organization.
• Discuss and support the marketing and sales team for the end-product of the project.

13. Test Engineer

The Test Engineer’s main responsibility is to define test cases, monitoring the test coverage, evaluate the test cycle to monitor quality and the consistent outcome. Tester is also responsible for specifying test data and evaluate the outcome of each test cycle. Test Engineer also called by name Test Analyst or Tester.

Responsibilities

• Ensures the solution meets the business requirements and free of bug, errors, and defects.
• Identifying the Target Test areas to be evaluated by the test effort.
• Write the appropriate tests required and associated Test Data to execute it.
• Gathering and managing the Test Data.
• Evaluating the outcome of each test cycle.

14. Software Developers/Programmers

A software developer or programmer is responsible for the development and implementation of assigned tasks mentioned in design documents or user stories.

Responsibilities

• Software Developers design, develop, and test new software programs and applications.
• Design and update the software database.
• Regularly communicate with management and technical support team for development.
• Maintain and improve the performance of existing software.
• Recommend improvements to existing software programs as necessary.
• Test and maintain software products to ensure fulfill strong functionality and optimization.

15. Subject Matter Expert

Subject Matter Expert (SME) are specialists in specific domains and having knowledge of a discipline, technology, product, business or entire business area for specific aspects of the development.

Responsibilities

• Review test cases for integration testing associated with the software management system.
• Help validate user requirements for payroll application.
• Conduct code walkthrough for accounts payable interface to a legacy system.
• Review requirements traceability matrix, and ensure that requirements have  all code coverage.
• Help refine and determine feasibility, correctness, and completeness of end-users ’ requirements.
• Provide input for the design and implementation of test cases and business scenarios.
• Help answer questions associated with the design of the status of the application, its features, and its capabilities.
• Validate executed test results.

16. Database Administrator

A Database Administrator is a specialist that schema models, designs and creates the databases and tables used by a software solution. This role is a combination of  Data  DBA (physical) and administration (logical).

17. Designer

The application designer is responsible for understanding the business requirements clearly and designing a solution that will fulfill the business needs.

Responsibilities

• Choose the best potential and optimum solution that will meet the client’s needs.
•  Decide technology to create an optimum solution for the client.
• Determine the overall model and framework for the solution, down to the level of designing screens, reports, programs and other project components.
• Determine the data needs.
• Handover the design and specification to programmers and other people who will implement the solution over design.

18. Solution Architect

The role of Solution Architect is used where generally SAP module customization required based on clients’ needs.

Responsibilities

• Define the scope of the project.
• Understand the client’s requirements and business viabilities.
• Determine the gaps between requirements and SAP functionalities and provide workable solutions to bridge the gaps.
• Design the solutions in detail with the help from the consultants and business.
• Plan the closure of the solutions and see through the implementation of the solutions.