Customizing MSF Agile - RACI on Workstreams and Activities
I've added some new Workstreams to the MSF Agile Process Guidance templates, and have a couple of questions.
For my new Workstreams, in the XML I see RACIItem's at both the Workstream and Activity nodes. When viewing the Process Guidance, I see the Roles identified for my Workstreams on the Workstream PG page, and the Roles identified for my related Activities on the Activity PG page. That part is all good. My questions are as follows.
Is it possible to have responsibility for a Workstream, but have no responsibility for any of the Activities that make up a Workstream?
Also, consider the following; I have two Activities that are part of a Workstream, with each Activity having a different Role as "Responsible". Who is "Responsible" for the Workstream? Both? Pick one?
Thanks for any/all opinions.
Chuck
Hi Chuck,
Your assessment of the workstream/activity relationship is correct. It is possible to have two activities that have different roles in a workstream and to have two responsible roles in a workstream. As a design rule, our goal was to prevent this in the MSFs. The reason is that each activity/workstream needs "one throat to choke" (an affectionate quote from an ex-boss of mine. :-) In other words, we made on role responsible for any given workstream as well as all of its composite activities. In theory, the xslt should be able to handle multiple roles in the responsible category but let me know if it doesn't (it would be a bug). As for no responsible role on an activity, what does that mean? Are you looking for an "all" role?
Randy
MSF
Randy,
Thanks for the reply. What I'm hearing you say is that when I have more than one Role responsible for Activities within a Workstream, then I should consider dividing the Activities to two separate Workstreams. That actually makes sense; having two roles responsible for the same Workstream would almost guarantee it not getting done!
Regarding your follow-up questions, I was just painting both sides of the problem. Having a single Role responsible for a Workstream fixes this for me.
Thanks,
Chuck
