Product Line Team Roles

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  3. System of Delivery
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  5. Structure
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  7. Product Line Team
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  9. Product Line Team Roles
A Product Line Team​​ is a special construct in larger, more complex organizations that is instantiated to break down larger features that will be developed by one or more Delivery Teams. ​ There are five roles in the Product Line Team. A person may hold more than one role on the team – as long as the team can keep its commitments.
The Product Owner represents the interests of the stakeholders, sponsors, and potential users; ensures product decisions are in alignment with the strategy; ensures Features and User Stories are properly vetted, prepared, executed, and delivered; ensures that the ready backlog is maintained and that the Delivery Teams are never starved of work.

Represent the interests of the stakeholders, sponsors, and potential users

Why This Is Important: 

  • Have an understanding of the market, customers, and industry trends that can shape the product roadmap

Key things that need to be accomplished:

  • Identify and evolve personas/outcomes as well as the hypothesized behavior change of those personas that will drive the business result

  •  Propose what combination of personas/outcomes will best result in the overall strategic vision 

  • Provide support to the Business Product Owner in writing Epic success criteria and desired outcomes to meet the strategic vision and business outcomes 

  • Provide support to the Business Product Owner in defining leading and lagging indicators which are used to justify investment in Epics, inform prioritization of Epics, and enable tracking of the impact of Epics as they are deployed 

  • Conduct user interviews to evolve their understanding of the problems customers face

Doing this successfully results in:

  • Enable the organization to measure the effectiveness of the work being delivered in influencing the desired behavior changes

Ensure product decisions are in alignment with the strategy

Why This Is Important: 

  • Teams can focus on value delivery, filtering out work that doesn’t align with the strategic vision

Key things that need to be accomplished:

  • Perform generative or evaluative research to advance developing strategy, plans, and designs; gather feedback about deployed or in-process designs, products, and prototypes. 

  • Establish with the Portfolio Team the product vision and roadmap and identify new markets and customers 

  • Continually mature the backlog with the Product Analysts, focusing on the profitability of the product (ROI)

Doing this successfully results in:

  • An organization that can effectively understand its customers and the market to drive business strategic outcomes

Ensure Features and User Stories are properly vetted, prepared, executed, and delivered

Why This Is Important: 

  • Creating a shared vision of who, what, and why having Features that align to the success criteria and desired outcomes of the Epic is key to making and meeting commitments

Key things that need to be accomplished:

  • Communicate the strategic vision and outcomes to the Product and Delivery Teams 

  • Represent the voice of the customer expressing their needs and interests 

  • Provide Feature solution options to the Portfolio Team working with the Product Team, balancing capacity and demand 

  • Validate that the Features are prioritized following the Portfolio priorities 

  • Provide an understanding of how the Features delivered in each release align with the strategic vision

Doing this successfully results in:

  • Teams will cease to be “order takers” and generate better solutions as they understand who, what, and why better Value delivered increased as the shared understanding of what is needed and why has increased

Ensure that the ready backlog is maintained and that the Delivery Team is never starved of work

Why This Is Important: 

  • A ready backlog is the key to ensuring that the system of delivery is predictable

Key things that need to be accomplished:

  • Create and maintain the ready-backlog of Features to ensure they meet the Definition of Ready and have Acceptance Criteria that are in alignment with the Epic success criteria and desired outcomes 

  • Ensure that there is a ready-backlog of stories for the Delivery Teams to consume that are aligned with the Features 

  • Prioritize the ready-backlog of Features 

  • Surface dependencies between backlog items and ensure they get managed

Doing this successfully results in:

  • Delivery Teams are never starved for work and can work on the most valuable items 
  • Fewer blockages or issues due to a lack of ability to identify and manage dependencies early

The Product Orchestrator ensures the Product Line Team has clarity of capacity and demand; provides oversight to maximize governing the flow of value; ensures product decisions are in alignment with the budgets and financial guidelines; collaborates with Product Category Team Portfolio Orchestrator and Delivery Team Product Manager.

Ensure the Product Team has clarity of capacity and demand 

Why this is important: 

  • A clear understanding of team capacity is fundamental to being able to make and meet commitments effectively 

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Ensure that there is an understanding of the throughput and cycle time for Features 
  • Understand the velocity variance for Delivery Teams using Scrum and throughput variance for Delivery Teams using Kanban 
  • Ensure with the Product Managers that the ALM is being used correctly to enable metrics 

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • Team will be able to demonstrate predictability and manage expectations more effectively 
  • Team will have increased optionality for how to use capacity to increase value

 

Provides oversight to maximize governing the flow of value

Why this is important: 

  • Team can focus on moving value through the system effectively

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Align Team Processes with the organization governance model and best practices 
  • Ensure that the Product Line Team Assessments are completed on a regular cadence 
  • Actively manage risks, impediments, dependencies, and assumptions with the rest of the Product Line Team to reduce impact early
  • Coordinate the day-to-day activities of the Product Line Team

Doing this successfully results in:

  • Key decisions and insights will be available for the whole team 
  • Value is flowing effectively through the Product Line Team Feature Kanban 
  • Improved predictability through early visibility and management of risks, impediments, dependencies, and assumptions

 

Ensures product decisions are in alignment with the budgets and financial guidelines

Why this is important: 

  • Critical to the organization being able to meet strategic outcomes

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Features with a clear connection to the Epic success criteria
  • Solutions decisions aligned with the strategic vision, reducing organizational risk to maintain alignment with strategy, budget, and financial guidelines

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • Strategy, budget, and financial guidelines are met
  • Value flowing effectively through the System of Delivery

 

Collaborates with Product Category Team Orchestrator and Delivery Team Product Manager

Why this is important: 

  • Product Team will be able to orchestrate better with Product Category and Delivery Teams

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Provide a primary escalation point for the Product Manager and the Portfolio Orchestrator
  • Ensure team orchestration with both Product Category and Delivery Teams is effective
  • Orchestrate Product Line Team communications
  • Provide a point of contact for the System of Delivery/governance

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • Increased shared understanding of value and communication throughout the System of Delivery (SoD)
 
 
 
The Product Designer creates wireframes/storyboards that provide input into requirements and ensures adherence to usability strategy.

Ensure the Product Team has clarity of capacity and demand 

Why this is important: 

  • Customers experience a seamless experience across products and portfolios

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Perform market research to understand customer goals, needs, motivation, and behaviors 
  • Create a testable hypothesis to answer the user’s core needs 
  • Design the product based on personas 
  • Conduct ideation, concept, and usability testing 
  • Prototype designs to share with the PO

Successful execution of the role results in:

  • Positive customer experiences that increase customer efficiency, loyalty, and new product adoption
The Solution Architect leads and coordinates the way features are implemented and applies proven design approaches to achieve resilience and extensibility; interfaces with Delivery Teams to communicate architecture strategy and understand potential constraints; identifies opportunities for refactoring and improvement.

Design the way products solve business problems by applying proven enterprise integration patterns and domain solutions

Why this is important: 

  • Creates optionality for the business by presenting solution designs that make the economic trade-offs for delivery timelines while making technical debt visible and well-understood

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Create an architecturally robust solution design and create visibility of the design throughout the technology organization 
  • Craft optionality with high-level solutions with the Product Teams 
  • Validate that solutions are within the established architectural patterns, guidelines, standards, and roadmap 
  • Improve continuously the quality of the products

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • A currency between technology and the business that creates an understanding of the trade-offs and technical debt that is being incurred 
  • Less downtime due to blockages from technical debt or poor engineering 
  • Bond between the architectural vision and how the software is being built

 

Leads and coordinates the way features are implemented and applies proven design approaches to achieve resilience and extensibility

Why this is important: 

  • The business needs technical expertise to craft innovative and high-quality solutions to problems to make and meet commitments effectively

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Take a ‘systems view’ on solution development 
  • Participate in the Solution Design and work with the Delivery Teams to ensure fitness for purpose 
  • Specify and prioritize non-functional requirements for features 
  • Foster teams’ alignment to a shared technical direction toward the accomplishment of the vision and roadmap 
  • Surface Technical Discovery/Debt and Adaptability risks, impediments, and dependencies with proposed solutions

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • Optionality in solutions is created for the business 
  • Technical Discovery/Debt and Adaptability risks, impediments, and dependencies are managed effectively and in a timely manner 
  • Value is flowing effectively through the team Feature Kanban; teams can better make and meet commitments

 

Interface with Delivery Teams to communicate architecture strategy and understand potential constraints

Why this is important: 

  • Communication is key to creating a shared understanding of the architectural vision.

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Understand and execute the architectural strategy with the Product Architect and Enterprise Architecture function 
  • Communicate the strategy to the Delivery Teams; work through the constraints that might impede their ability to execute the strategy 
  • Ensure standards for development, testing, and infrastructure are followed by Delivery Teams

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • Optionality in solutions is created for the business
  • Teams are better able to make and meet commitments
  • Health of the solution improves over time

 

Identify opportunities for refactoring and improvement

Why this is important: 

  • Reducing technical debt will create more opportunities to create value while increasing the quality and scalability of products

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Operate within the economic constraints to validate the impact of design decisions
  • Work with Portfolio stakeholders, particularly the Product Architect, to develop, analyze, slice, and realize the implementation of Epics
  • Provide technical insight, oversight, and foster built-in quality

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • Being more predictable
  • Less downtime due to blockages from technical debt or poor engineering
  • Increased quality and scalability of products
 
 
The Delivery Lead prioritizes and coordinates the technology, quality, and infrastructure delivery of the solution; conveys risks and impediments for execution; improves team technical capabilities and skills.

Prioritize and coordinate the technology, quality, and infrastructure delivery of the solution

Why this is important: 

  • The business needs technical expertise to craft innovative and high-quality solutions to problems to make and meet commitments effectively

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Take a “systems view” on solution development and participate in creating the Solution Design
  • Align teams to a shared technical direction
  • Ensure quality is a whole team activity and focus the teams on shifting quality left

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • Optionality in solutions is created for the business
  • Value is flowing effectively through the team Feature Kanban
  • Teams can better make and meet commitments

 

Convey risks and impediments to execution

Why this is important: 

  • Early and often risk and impediment reduction increases predictability and the quality of the solutions

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Surface Technical Discovery/Debt and Adaptability risks, impediments, and dependencies with proposed solutions
  • Operate within economic constraints to justify the impact of design decisions
  • Provide technical insight oversight and foster built-in quality

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • Technical Discovery / Debt and Adaptability risks, impediments, and dependencies are managed effectively and in a timely manner
  • Being more predictable 
  • Increased quality and scalability of products

 

Improve team technical capabilities and skills

Why this is important: 

  • Improves team abilities and, ultimately, their engagement

Key things that need to be accomplished: 

  • Develop team technical abilities
  • Improve team technical standards
  • Define and innovate development and quality tool sets

Doing this successfully results in: 

  • Teams are better equipped to provide high-quality working tested software
  • Improved capacity of the organization to deliver value