Roles in a small team: who owns what

Why "we'll sort it out as we go" fails

When responsibility isn't assigned, one of two things happens: either everyone does the interesting parts and nobody does the necessary ones, or one person carries it all while the rest wait to be told.

Dividing roles isn't bureaucracy. It's how you know who to ask a question and who to ask for a result.

The minimum set for three

Owner of the whole. Not a boss, but the person holding the picture: what we're building, what's done, what's next. Usually whoever had the idea. Their job isn't handing out tasks, it's stopping the project from sprawling.

Owner of what the user sees. Interface, copy, behaviour. Often the most visible part and the easiest to demonstrate.

Owner of what's underneath. Data, logic, storage, deployment.

With two people the roles merge: one takes the visible part, one the internals, and you own the whole together.

What matters more than roles

Who decides when you disagree. Settle it at the start: if half an hour doesn't resolve it, the owner of the whole decides. Otherwise arguments eat weeks.

Who's responsible for it being deployed. Usually forgotten, and consequently it isn't deployed anywhere.

Who writes the README. Also forgotten, and without it nobody opens the project.

How to split tasks

Not by type of work but by pieces that can be finished. "You do the interface" is bad: there's no point at which it ends. "You do the list screen and the add form" is good.

A useful rule: any task that doesn't fit into one or two evenings gets broken up. Oversized tasks hang around for weeks and quietly sink the project.

On learning

There's an approach that works especially well in teams of beginners: the task goes to whoever is weaker at it, and whoever is stronger reviews the result.

Slower in wall-clock time, but both grow: one figures it out, the other learns to explain. For a project built for the experience, that's the right trade.

What to write down

One page everyone can see: who owns what, who breaks ties, what counts as finished. Five minutes of work, and half the conflicts never happen.

And record who actually did what. Not for bookkeeping, but because at the end it's the only thing left: not "the three of us worked on it" but "she owned the data, he did the interface, he put it together".