Process 3: Assign Roles
Figure 5 illustrates the activities required for assigning roles.
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Figure 5. Activities for assigning roles
Activities: Assign Roles
When new responsibilities have been identified, they need to be assigned to roles and teams formed. There are many ways to form teams. Depending on organizational culture, patterns of work, and the skills and personalities available in the group, some types of teams work better than others. Be clear about responsibility ownership.
The primary activities required for assigning roles are:
- Decide the nature of the responsibilities.
- Determine the roles needed.
- Determine the type of structure needed.
- Apply teaming principles.
- Make and communicate assignments.
- Create a training plan.
- Create a staffing plan.
- Fine tune assignments.
Table 13. Activities and Considerations for Assigning Roles
Activities
Considerations
Decide nature of responsibilities
Key questions:
- Is the work plan-driven or interrupt-driven?
- What skills or experience are required?
- What accountability does the work fall under?
- How much time per day, per week, or per month will this require? What is the pattern of work?
- Is there any segregation of duties required that prevents this work from being done with other work?
- Can part of the work be done more efficiently, or can it be automated?
Inputs:
- List of changing responsibilities
Output:
- Description of responsibilities
Best practices:
- Review other SMFs for responsibility suggestions.
- Consider responsibilities that are changing or removed as well as those that are added.
- Workforce calculators can be useful here.
Determine roles needed
Key questions:
- Does this work fall under existing roles? Are new roles needed?
- How many people are needed in each role to do the work?
- What constraints are there to how the work can be done or combined with other work?
Inputs:
- Description of responsibilities
- Existing roles
Outputs:
- Updated roles
Best practice:
- Try to keep the number of roles to a minimum.
Determine type of structure needed
Key questions:
- Do you need a project team?
- Do you need virtual teams?
- How will you handle rotation?
- What about knowledge transfer?
- Do you have plans for morale, employee satisfaction, and career growth?
- Is your compensation in line with goals?
- Will you be outsourcing anything?
- Will you use a matrix model?
Inputs:
- Updated roles
Output:
- Team plan
Best practices:
- It’s a good idea to include human resources to ensure that new approaches or requirements in work responsibilities are reflected in job descriptions.
Apply teaming principles
Key questions:
- What teaming principles apply in this situation?
- What changes need to be made to adjust the vision to comply with the teaming principles?
Inputs:
- Mapping of responsibilities to current IT organization
- MOF principles of teaming
- List of conflicts and gaps
- Proposed team model
- Requirements and constraints
Output:
- List of potential changes
- Modified team model
Best practices:
- Compare your modified vision to the teaming principles in this guide. Make adjustments as needed to optimize the design.
Make and communicate assignments
Key questions:
- What is feasible to do?
- What constraints are there for organizational change?
- Will the change proposed have sufficient positive impact to offset the disruption and negative impact?
- Have you determined accountabilities?
- Have you aligned accountabilities within the organization?
- Have you aligned the organization with identified accountabilities?
Inputs:
- List of potential changes and responsibilities needed
- Requirements and constraints
- Existing teams, roles, and responsibilities
Outputs:
- Staffing plan
Best practices:
- Be aware of any policies your organization may have regarding changing workforce or assignments.
- While it is usually preferable to have the reporting structure match the team structure, it is not always the best solution. Be sure to consider virtual teams, temporary teams, rotation, and other approaches to meet your needs.
Create a training plan
Key questions:
- What skills are needed that can be added through training?
- What resources do you have for providing training?
- When is the training required?
Inputs:
- Current team assignments
- Policies
- Responsibility descriptions
Outputs:
- Training plan
Best practice:
- Focus on people skills first.
- Encourage employees to develop their own training plans that align with their immediate role and their long-term career path.
Create a staffing plan
Key questions:
- What additional staff do you need to cover the responsibilities?
- Where should they be located?
- What skills and experience do they need to have?
Inputs:
- Current team assignments
- Policies
- Responsibility descriptions
Outputs:
- Staffing plan
Best practices:
- Look internally and externally—consider outsourced, virtual, and permanent teams.
- Where it’s feasible, try to create shared work spaces for people working within one accountability. If someone is working in Support on Monday, that work should be done in a Support shared work space.
Fine tune assignments
Key questions:
- How will you measure quality? Who is responsible for quality?
- What reporting model will you use?
- How will you ensure your ability to meet service levels?
- How will you ensure staff satisfaction and effectiveness?
Inputs:
- SLAs and OLAs
- Responsibilities
Outputs:
- Feedback to the Organizational Health Review
- Proposed changes to teams
Best practice:
- Evaluate assignments and staffing levels. Go through them again as organization and business goals change.
- The MOF role model can be scaled to organizations of different sizes. For large organizations the model is scaled up by implementing multiple roles of the same role type. For small organizations the model is scaled down by combining roles.
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