The roles that keep a delivery team shipping
On a team with many developers, the thing that keeps delivery predictable is not the tooling — it is clarity about who owns what. Here is a structure that worked well for us, from the business need at the top to a task in a sprint at the bottom.
The roles, clear boundaries
- Product owner — closely understands the business need for the product. Helps the team prioritise and, when a request is unclear, explains what the business actually means by it.
- Project manager — owns the product's economy and timeline: budget, roadmap, and the communication with the business. Schedules epics together with the product owner.
- Technical project manager — runs the technical team, often doubling as scrum master. Plans sprints with the team, schedules features and work items, and assigns them.
- Developers — the team that builds the product. They turn work items and tasks into working software, and take part in breaking the work down and estimating the effort each piece needs.
- UX/UI — shapes each new feature before it reaches development, so there is a clear, shared picture of what is being built.
The split between the two project-manager roles is the key: the project manager schedules epics with the product owner, while the technical project manager schedules the features and work items underneath them. Each works at the altitude they own.
Settle the spec before the team starts
A new feature is drawn first by UX/UI, together with the product owner and the technical project manager, so everyone agrees on what is needed. That draft goes through several passes before it becomes an order to the technical team — the goal is that the team can build it without the requirements shifting underneath them. Late change is the most expensive kind, so this front-loads the thinking to avoid it.
Break the work down
With the shape agreed, the technical project manager and the technical team — developers, UX/UI, and the rest — break each epic into feature requests, work items, and tasks, and agree the effort each needs. Effort can be sized however the organisation prefers:
- Relative sizes — Very Large, Large, Small, Very Small.
- Or hours — 4, 8, 12, and so on.
Plan the sprint
The technical project manager then plans the work items and assigns them in sprint planning, in cooperation with the team. Epics and the roadmap stay with the project manager and product owner; the sprint-level detail stays with the technical project manager and the team.
None of this is process for its own sake. Each role exists to keep an unbroken line from a real business need to the work that delivers it — which, years later, is still exactly how we think about delivery.