Team Shaping Play: Roles and Responsibilities

[Gregg Gellhaus]

Our team is growing and taking on more cross-functional initiatives. We’ve noticed some ambiguity around who owns what, especially as we scale. Running the Roles and Responsibilities play will help us clarify expectations, reduce overlap, and empower each team member to take ownership confidently.

I’ll break the play into two one-hour sessions to accommodate our team size (10 people). In the first session, we’ll map out current roles and responsibilities collaboratively. In the second, we’ll address any overlaps or gaps and align on ownership. I’ll also facilitate a follow-up to revisit any unresolved tensions and ensure we’re all on the same page.

[Calogero Bonasia]

The proposed "Roles and Responsibilities Play" addresses a fundamental organizational challenge: clarifying ownership in growing teams. However, the real risk lies in reducing this exercise to mere administrative ritual.

From Documentation to Living Practice

Role mapping provides necessary but insufficient clarity. As microservices require clear boundaries and well-defined interfaces, teams need explicit understanding of responsibilities, interactions, and decision-making authority. This segmentation isn't about reduction—it's about clarity: what we do, whom we interact with, where our boundaries lie.

Two Dimensions of Leadership

Effective governance operates through operational and relational leverage. The operational dimension defines objectives and allocates resources. The relational dimension manages interpersonal dynamics, implicit tensions, and unstated expectations. Role mapping primarily addresses operational leverage but cannot ignore the relational: overlaps often reflect ambiguous expectations and latent conflicts.

Beyond the Exercise

To prevent this becoming empty bureaucracy:

• Clarify the teleological substrate: why this mapping matters, what problem it solves
• Document not just roles but interfaces: how roles interact, what information flows between them, which decisions require coordination
• Distinguish operational ownership (who does) from strategic accountability (who answers for results)
• Establish periodic review mechanisms: roles evolve with the organization
• Connect role definition to actual team capabilities: formal roles mean nothing without requisite competencies

The Real Goal

Role clarity serves as cognitive platform integrating different forms of operational knowledge. It enables autonomy, reduces communication dependencies, and establishes common language across functions. The mapping exercise succeeds when it transforms tacit assumptions into verifiable agreements—not when it produces charts and documents.

I suggest to read this article: "Oltre il controllo" https://www.stultiferanavis.it/la-rivista/oltre-il-controllo

[Petru Simion _Simitech Ltd__]

Hi @Gregg Gellhaus ,

This sounds like a great initiative 👏 — once teams start working more cross-functionally, clarity around who owns what becomes just as important as the work itself. I really like that you’re splitting the Roles & Responsibilities play into two sessions. In my experience, the first pass surfaces perceptions, and the second pass creates alignment — which is where the real value happens.

Something we’ve seen a lot in Jira environments is that ambiguity doesn’t just exist at the team level — it also shows up in Jira role assignments across projects. As teams scale, it becomes harder to see:

• Who actually holds which role across projects

• Where the same person is filling multiple roles

• Where gaps or overlaps exist

• Whether roles are still appropriate for current responsibilities

To help with that problem, our team built an app called Roles Usage for Jira (formerly Roles Dashboard for Jira). It gives administrators and leads a clear, visual overview of roles across projects and users, so it becomes much easier to spot misalignment or missing ownership.

Some of the key things it helps with are:

✅ Visualizing relationships
You can see project-role-user and user-role-project mappings in both directions, with interactive diagrams you can drill into.

✅ Searching & filtering
Quickly find who has a role, where a role is used, or which projects a user is tied to.

✅ Exporting role data
Handy for reporting, audits, restructuring, or follow-up discussions after your R&R workshop.

This kind of visibility often supports exactly the conversations you’re planning — especially when you move into identifying overlaps, gaps, and unclear ownership.

If you’re curious, here’s more info:
Roles Usage for Jira — Simplifying Jira Role Management
(previously “Roles Dashboard for Jira”)

Happy to answer any questions, and best of luck with the sessions — sounds like your team is being really intentional about scaling the right way 👍

You can search all roless across projects or filtere out by project(s) and role(s). 

Result is exportable to csf for further analysis and storage.

Regards, 

Petru