People often struggle to describe who does what. Getting it wrong can mean that things fall through the cracks, or it becomes so descriptive that it hinders work.
Articulating roles and responsibilities, especially in the 4Ds format, can clarify decision-making, help set expectations within and outside of the team, and foster better collaboration.
With this in mind, with input from Jamie Arnold, I created a workshop to use with a client to walk them through roles and responsibilities that could help clarify how they work together and describe their roles to others.
I have used this workshop with leadership teams, but any team can equally use it, particularly ones with many parts to their work.
The 4Ds refer to Decisions, Direction, Duties and Domain.
Decisions – what decisions do you have the final say on?
Different people are responsible for the final say on different types of decisions on any multi-specialist team.
For example, what’s in the roadmap, what to do with risks, or what software will we use?
Direction – which areas of work do you lead?
Different people will lead in different areas and may set outcomes and direction for groups of people.
For example, the product direction, technical direction or team practices
Duties – what things do you have a responsibility to do?
These are the things that need to be done by someone; they may be operational or enabling and need someone to be responsible for them.
For example, reporting upwards, communicating to stakeholders or software updates.
Domain – What are the boundaries within which your responsibilities lie?
This is helpful to describe the edges of those responsibilities; you may have people responsible for the same thing within different domains.
For example, in a team, across three teams, or within a programme.
With one additional question: What are you (or want to be) involved in?
What things do you want to collaborate, be consulted, or be kept updated on
The answers to this can open up the conversation for collaboration.
The format
Preparation
Each person takes time to respond to the prompts, the 4Ds, and the additional question; they should write their answers on an index card, a single side of A4 paper, or a digital whiteboard with hidden text.
They then respond to the same prompts for each of their teammates as they see things. As they did before, they should write their answers on an index card, a single side of A4 paper, or a digital whiteboard with hidden text.
After introducing the workshop, the team could do these two exercises asynchronously to give time to think through the responses properly before coming together to discuss.
Laying it out
Once you have all your cards completed, lay them out on a wall in a grid, with one axis representing the name of the person who wrote the responses and the other representing the response about the person. A diagonal line will show what people say about themselves.
Review, Discussion and Agreement
Give everyone a chance to read through what people have written on the cards and make a note of what they agree and disagree with; it can help to use coloured dots or emoji stickers here to have a visual representation.
Then, go through the areas where there is disagreement and discuss those.
Make sure to note any gaps, that’s anything that doesn’t have an owner as you go. You can come back to those later to agree on who should be responsible for them.
Also, review the “involved with” answers to see if there are opportunities to join up or collaborate.
Next steps
Take the outcomes the workshop and write it up in a way that is easy to share with people outside the team.
You may need a few iterations to get something you are all happy with and a few more discussions along the way.
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If you use it, let me know how it goes, and , if you need a Miro board, there’s one here.
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