Clone of Team of Teams Roles
Team of teams Roles
The Team of Teams is the first holon of Scaled Agile. Its success depends on the health of the Teams that comprise it, and the strength of the relationships between them. Teams conduct their own ceremonies and participate in the ceremonies of the Team of Teams holon, along with their peers. With proper communication, representation and information sharing Teams of Teams are able to rapidly create value in a much broader scale with minimal loss due to overhead. Without it, key risks due to handoffs, waiting for dependencies, rework due to integration of incompatible designs, siloed knowledge and missed opportunities for reuse, co-design and learning can substantially diminish the capacity of the Team of Teams.
Values & Goals
Understand my team’s role
Accountability to my team
Self governing team
Self organizing team
Purpose
Agile mindset
Willing to learn & grow
Product & Impact
Prioritized healthy backlog
Working software with quality
Necessary tools to do the job
Good metric tracking (KPIs)
ToT working agreement
Predictable delivery
Product feedback loops
Marketing plans
Training courses
Leadership & Culture
ToT morale
Cross-Team camaraderie
Shared vision/goals
ToT values
Understand function of other teams
External perception
Trust, transparency
Cross-Team feedback
Servant leadership culture
Conscious Leadership culture
Continuous improvement culture
Cross-Team collaboration
Team member rotation
Development of future leaders
Markets & Environment
Effective Agile process
Effective architecture
Collaboration space
Collaboration tools
Predictable cadence
Automation where appropriate
Effective Business processes
Sales pipeline
Sufficient funding & sponsorship
Upstream dependencies support success
Specialized services support
Share best practices
Cross training
Team of Teams Coach
The Team of Teams Agile coach is the main Agile champion for all the teams and their supporting partners involved with any given product or technology area who are collaborating together. They adapt organizational Agile standards to suit their particular environment but maintain compatibility with the portfolio as a whole. They are mentors to the Scrum Masters on each team and work through them, providing training, support, and feedback to help ensure both their and the team’s success. They facilitate the ToT Agile sessions and meet regularly with everyone on the Product Team to help them understand how they need to adapt their understanding of their role to be most effective in the new Agile way of working.
Values & Goals
Servant Leader Mindset
Coach, Enabler
Agile expertise
Adaptable & flexible
Systems thinking
Proactive problem solver
Product & Impact
Empirical Observation of progress & improvement
Configures the Agile tool
Promotes achievement mindset
Leads by example
Train team members
Leadership & Culture
Creates trust relationships
Help stay aligned to values
Visibility & Transparency
Motivates & inspires
Helps team members commit
Collaborates to improve process
Mentors SMs
Markets & Environment
Adapts the process/methodology
Broad view towards increasing Agility
Facilitates meetings
Improves flow
Creates an environment of success
Chief Product Owner
The Chief Product Owner has a dual leadership role, leading their team of Product Owners who support the various times while at the same time leading the charge for the Product Team as a whole to rally behind their Product Vision. The leaders and SMEs on the Product Team can then carry that vision to the various folks with whom they interact, helping to get everyone pulling in the same direction. The CPO defines the value proposition and prioritizes the features they believe will have the greatest impact on the customer and the market.
Values & Goals
Passionate about the product
Result oriented
Clearly communicates value
Deep understanding of market & customer
Owns the Vision
Inspirational leader
Product & Impact
Creates Feature Backlog
Defines priority
Owns Feature/Epics readiness
Creation of value
Leadership & Culture
Accepts completed Features
Creates Objectives (OKRs)
Shares the Vision
Communicates with Stakeholders
Shares overall value with team
Ensures alignment & communication with teams and leadership
Markets & Environment
Product impact on system/product family
Market impact
Allows freedom inside of priority context
Architect
The Team of Teams Architect is accountable for the integrity of the technical platform(s) that support the solutions that the teams are building. This includes alignment with architectural standards and vision as well as the capabilities needed to support the current and future functional and non-functional requirements of the solutions.
The Architect is responsible for ensuring each Team Technical Lead is able to support the teams in producing code with consistent quality and style, take advantage of opportunities for reuse and integration, and share knowledge with other teams about the structure of the overall solution.
The ToT Architect may also be responsible for promoting and supporting the use of continuous integration, delivery, automated testing and deployment solutions across the Teams.
Values & Goals
Results Oriented
Rapid decision making
Collaborative
Market & customer context
Inspirational Leader
Creative, visionary motivator
Challenges status Quo
Entrepreneurial mindset
Systemic design thinker
Flexible
Root cause focused
Product & Impact
Defines systems
Owns Performance & Standards
Creates work items with their team
Prioritize towards strategic deadlines
Ensure quality
Owns architectural runway
Owns system KPIs
Solves problems/outages
Leadership & Culture
Mentors
Train/teach the team
Provides clarity/confidence/guidance
Provides feedback
Collaborates with other SMEs
Articulates future state
Ensures alignment & communication with teams and leadership
Markets & Environment
Product impact on system/product family
Market impact
Allows freedom inside of priority context
Stakeholder/Business Owner
The Stakeholders at the Team of Teams Holon play a similar role to the Team Holon - mostly to help set objectives and give feedback to help create a better product. Many stakeholders working in a traditional environment may be accustomed to being relatively disengaged, sometimes only seeing a product after it’s done. Understanding precisely when and how to engage stakeholders, and helping them understand that they play an important role throughout the process is critical to achieving the results possible with a healthy Agile process.
Values & Goals
Engaged in the Agile process
Customer focused
Clear of purpose & direction
Value/Impact mindset
Product & Impact
Helps define OKRs
Rapid decision making
Attends Demos
Attends Continuous Improvement events
Leadership & Culture
Partners with the CPO
Gives teams directional feedback
Trusts the teams
Markets & Environment
Uses long feedback loops to course correct
Stays ahead of the market
Aligns with broader organizational objectives
Subject Matter Expert
Values & Goals
Understand how they contribute to the purpose
Demonstrates commitment & responsibility
Proactively acts & communicates
Willing to learn & grow
Self manager
Product & Impact
Contributes to the solution
Creates artifacts & guidelines
Helps prioritize
Reviews product quality
Leadership & Culture
Aligns to the vision
Shares knowledge with context
Collaborates with teams
Provides support
Markets & Environment
Awareness of the market
Awareness of systems
Prioritizes their capacity
Organizational navigation
Reviews precedent/standards