Thursday, May 8, 2014


The software delivery organization has a vision for how we expect the staffing of the organization to evolve. 

There are two parts to the software delivery organization: M3 and software development. This blog post addresses the software development teams. There are four teams as part of software development all seated in the west wing of B200. You might enjoy their team names – as each team chose it.
  •  BigEye Barracuda – Primary responsibility: medical education student performance (assessments and evaluations)
  • SharpFin Barracuda – Primary responsibility: medical education – admissions, curriculum, and student portfolio. (Barracuda used to be one team and split into species as they split the work)
  • Blue Runners - Primary responsibility: MARTA (evolution of M-Recruit and M-ACE)
  • Mana Kai - Primary responsibility: HBO Data Request Tool
Each team also as ongoing maintenance and enhancement responsibilities for a variety of applications.

Our vision is to have a fully staffed set of agile teams well versed in building software applications, leveraging appropriate tools, and applying advanced software and agile practices and techniques.

We have a number of roles we expect on each team with the number of individuals fulfilling the role varying.

  • Project Manager
  • 4 Developers including at least 1 lead
  • At least 1 Business Analyst (BA) and/or User Experience (UX)
  • Service Manager & Product and Application Manager 

There are occasions where one role may overlap with another or one person may fulfill a joint assignment. For example, a project manager might be skilled and expected to contribute as a BA. Similarly many of the UX activities are also analysis activities so there are times when a UX analyst might also be doing business analysis. We need the freedom for teams to adopt roles as needed.

Our goal is to staff the teams with the roles and needed capacity as outlined above. Doing this will allow each team to tackle both small and larger projects. Importantly, it also allows the software delivery organization to flex resources between teams when necessary. Our belief is that staffing in this way will enable us to better meet the mission expectations of the organization!

So don’t be surprised if you see postings to fill a number of positions in software delivery!

Please stop by NCRC Collab Space and find me if you have any questions.

2 comments :

  1. As a Service Manager, I'm happy that there is the inclusion of members of the Service Delivery Team in your strategy. Thanks Jim!

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  2. I would suggest including the role of Architect as well. This may include different types or architects and may be only in the planning phase and periodically throughout the project.

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