Customers, performers, and teams
Each task corresponds to a relationship between two parties (may be an individual and a team, two different teams, or two individuals within the same team) within the organization:
- The customer is responsible for defining the task clearly, so that the performer knows what to do, and checking that it has been completed by the agreed-upon deadline.
- The performer is responsible for doing the work required to complete the task, satisfying the customer's requirements, and communicating any changes in details or completion time.
Teams all have a single designated lead (an individual). The team lead is the performer for team-level tasks and the customer for all tasks contained within their team (which are sub-tasks of those team-level tasks). Team leads are also responsible for serving as a discovery mechanism for other teams and individuals to discover which members of their team they should talk to / ask for help on a particular task or question. Cross-team communications do not need to go through team leads - but team leads are a good first person to ask.
Team members are responsible for doing the work they have agreed to do as performers in the team. Team members may be performers for tasks outside their team, and may be customers for tasks both inside and outside their team, but usually most of their tasks will come from planning conducted by and with their team lead. Team members are responsible for declining requests for work from others outside their team if it would endanger their ability to deliver on previously agreed-upon deadlines.
Teams as a whole are responsible for crafting good social structure, checking in with each other, pairing, sharing knowledge, etc. in ways not explicitly tracked by this system. Teams may negotiate within themselves and with their lead to define more specific responsibilities in these areas.
Next, see task states.