Roles and Responsibilities
Roles and Responsibilities is a team workshop in which each member writes down what they believe their own responsibilities are and what they think every other role is responsible for, and the two views are then compared. Each role owner accepts, rejects or adjusts what colleagues expected of them, and the team finds owners for the tasks nobody claimed. The procedure is a play from the Atlassian Team Playbook and differs from a responsibility chart in that it starts from perceptions instead of a task list.
Facilitation script
- 1
Explain the purpose and the table, then agree the list of roles on the team.
5 min - 2
Silent round one: each person writes the top responsibilities of their own role.
10 min - 3
Silent round two: everyone writes what they think each of the other roles is responsible for.
10 min - 4
Clarify role by role: the role holder accepts, rejects or adjusts what others wrote. Rejected items go to the unassigned list.
15 min - 5
Work through unassigned and doubly claimed responsibilities and agree an owner or a next step for each.
15 min - 6
Summarise the agreed responsibilities, decide where they are documented and when they will be reviewed.
5 min
Tips
Keep both writing rounds silent and, in an online tool, hide other people's entries until the round ends; once people see what colleagues wrote, they adjust their own view and the gaps you came to find disappear.
When a role holder rejects an item, ask who they think should own it before moving on.
The unassigned list is the main product of the session, so protect at least fifteen minutes for it.
Common pitfalls
Participants can see each other's entries during the silent rounds and align their answers, so the differences in perception never show up
Responsibilities are written as broad labels such as 'communication' or 'quality', which everyone can agree to without clarifying who does what
The clarification round turns into criticism of how a person does their job; they become defensive and stop accepting any adjustment
Unassigned responsibilities are noted and left without an owner, so the dropped work that prompted the session stays dropped
The manager answers for every role, and the team leaves with the manager's picture instead of an agreement between the people doing the work
Variations
Larger teams of six to eight need about 90 minutes; above eight, split by sub-team or group similar roles into one row. New-role version: run it for a single role that has just been created or filled, with the neighbouring roles giving their view. Follow-up with a RACI Matrix for the handful of cross-role tasks that remain disputed. Remote: use a shared table with private writing mode for the two silent rounds. Add a column for what each role needs from the others to do its job.
Where it fits
When to use it
Tasks are being done twice, or not at all, because each person assumed someone else owned them
A team has just formed or been reorganised and job titles no longer say who does what
A new role has joined and both the newcomer and the team are unsure where it begins and ends
Two colleagues keep stepping on each other's work and the friction is about ownership, not about personalities
A cross-functional project starts and people from different departments bring different assumptions about their part
When not to use it
You need to assign responsibility task by task for a defined process or project plan; a RACI Matrix gives that level of detail
The open question is how far a role's decision authority goes in relation to the manager; Delegation Poker is designed for that
The underlying issue is a personal conflict or a performance problem with one person: a group exercise exposes them, so handle it in a one-to-one or mediated conversation
Roles are about to change again within weeks because of a pending reorganisation; wait until the structure is settled
The group has more than eight roles: comparing every view of every role takes too long, so split into sub-teams or use a Team Charter session for the broad picture
Related methods
Frequently asked questions
What is Roles and Responsibilities?▾
Roles and Responsibilities is a team workshop in which members write down their own responsibilities and what they believe their colleagues' responsibilities are, then compare the two. Each role holder accepts, rejects or adjusts the expectations others had of them, and the team assigns owners to anything left over. It is a play from the Atlassian Team Playbook.
How is it different from a RACI matrix?▾
A RACI matrix starts from a list of tasks and assigns each role a level of involvement per task. This workshop starts from people's perceptions of each role and looks for the mismatches. It is quicker and better at surfacing hidden assumptions; a RACI matrix is more precise for a defined process. They work well in sequence.
How long does a Roles and Responsibilities session take?▾
About 60 minutes for a team of up to five roles, and closer to 90 minutes for six to eight. The two silent writing rounds take ten minutes each; the rest goes to clarifying each role and dealing with unowned responsibilities.
What happens with responsibilities nobody wants?▾
They go on an unassigned list and are reviewed together near the end of the session. For each, the team either agrees an owner, decides consciously to stop doing it, or names a person who will take the question to whoever can decide. Leaving the list untouched defeats the purpose of the session.
How often should the session be repeated?▾
Whenever the team's composition or mandate changes, and otherwise about once a year. Responsibilities drift as work changes, and a short rerun with the previous result on the table shows what has moved.
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Try it freeMethod descriptions on Workshop Weaver are original content written by our team, based on established facilitation practices. This method was inspired by work from Atlassian Team Playbook.