On an agile forum there is a discussion about roles, Business Analyst, and other type roles and what these people do on software development projects.
This of course is backwards, like many discussions that fail to return to "first principles." It's the deliverables that the project produces, not the effort performed by roles or even by the people.
Deliverables Are King
So how can we connect deliverables with people and processes? Simple the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM). The RAM is really called the Accountability Assignment Matrix, since accountability is all about determining who is going to cause something to appear.
The RAM defines the deliverables and the people accountable for them. Where do the deliverables come from? The Work Breakdown Structure of course. Don't do WBS on your project, I know you're an agile shop and agile shops don't do WBS's. Not true of course. What are those 3x5 cards stuck on the left hand side of your cork board. They are the deliverables. They have relationships with other cards pending or complete.
This is not a very good WBS of course, because the cards are not thought through to the end in many cases. But it's a start.
With a "real" WBS, which does think through the deliverables to the end, the terminal nodes or maybe the parner of the terminal nodes are the columns in the RAM. The rows are the names of the people accountable for making those deliverables appear at the needed time in the project.
