Team Model

Overview

Agile delivery depends on having the right people with the right authority working together at the right time.

Teams should be multidisciplinary. A team should not be made only of engineers, only of analysts or only of managers. It should include the skills needed to understand the problem, design the service, build the solution, assure it and operate it.

Core Roles

Delivery Lead

Owns delivery execution.

Responsibilities:

• delivery plan

• team rhythm

• sprint or flow management

• RAID management

• milestone tracking

• reporting

• customer governance coordination

• blocker escalation

• acceptance coordination

Product Lead

Owns product direction and prioritisation.

Responsibilities:

• product vision

• outcomes

• backlog priority

• roadmap

• trade-off decisions

• value measurement

• stakeholder alignment

Service Designer

Owns end-to-end service understanding.

Responsibilities:

• user journeys

• service blueprints

• cross-channel experience

• operational handoffs

• assisted digital considerations

• service pain points

User Researcher

Owns user insight and research quality.

Responsibilities:

• research planning

• recruitment approach

• interviews and testing

• synthesis

• user needs evidence

• usability findings

• accessibility insight

Business Analyst

Owns structured analysis of business, process, rules and requirements.

Responsibilities:

• process mapping

• requirement clarification

• acceptance criteria

• dependency analysis

• data and rule mapping

• operational impacts

Technical Lead

Owns technical direction.

Responsibilities:

• architecture

• engineering standards

• technical decisions

• integration approach

• technical risk

• code quality

• technical assurance

Security Lead

Owns security and assurance alignment.

Responsibilities:

• security requirements

• data handling

• threat modelling

• access model

• vulnerability management

• risk treatment

• security evidence

Engineers

Own technical build and implementation.

Responsibilities:

• code delivery

• tests

• peer review

• deployment scripts

• documentation

• defect resolution

Test and Quality Lead

Owns test approach and quality evidence.

Responsibilities:

• test strategy

• acceptance testing

• regression testing

• defect management

• evidence capture

• quality reporting

Commercial Lead

Owns commercial alignment.

Responsibilities:

• Statement of Work interpretation

• change control

• milestone and payment alignment

• contract assumptions

• IP considerations

• supplier commercial alignment

Supplier Lead

Owns supplier coordination where subcontractors are used.

Responsibilities:

• supplier onboarding

• supplier scope clarity

• delivery dependencies

• supplier reporting

• supplier acceptance evidence

• flow-down requirements

Customer Roles

Customers should identify:

• senior responsible owner

• product owner or business owner

• operational owner

• technical owner

• security owner

• data owner

• subject matter experts

• acceptance approver

Team Size Guidance

A good agile team is small enough to communicate quickly and large enough to contain the required skills.

Where teams grow, split by product, service area, workstream or capability rather than creating one oversized team.

Role Clarity Rules

• Every backlog item must have an owner.

• Every deliverable must have an acceptance owner.

• Every risk must have an owner.

• Every decision must have a decision-maker.

• Every supplier task must have an internal accountable owner.