The document explores the concept of redefining roles within a professional context, particularly in quality engineering at eBay. It emphasizes the importance of collaboration, flexibility, and the evolution of responsibilities while introducing the idea of 'rolegrams' to illustrate the dynamics of roles and their expectations. Key themes include managing teams, fostering a culture of quality, and the various dimensions and interpretations of roles in an organizational setting.

1. Thinking Through
Your Role
James and Jon Bach
james@satisfice.com
jobach@ebay.com

2. Reinventing my role @
…an experience report
Reinvention: Looking at the way a problem
has been solved and acting as if we are
solving it for the first time.
A process of how we move from one way of
thinking to another and how might we create
solutions unburdened by rules.

3. My eBay career: 2011 to present
Director
QE Search
(Front End)
Director
Live Site Quality
QE/PM
End-to-End
Solutions
QE/PM
(CommerceOS)
Quality
Evangelist
Engineering
Excellence lead
2012 2013 2014 2015 20162011
reorg reorg reorg

4. 4
QE Manager: Search Front End
Mission: Manage a team of 8 Quality Engineers
Establish trust and credibility
• Collaborate with PM/PD team peers
• Coach my team – inspire and build them up
• Serve my team – shoulder their burden
• Partner with other teams (Search Back End)
• Understand dependent teams
• Learn about tools and techniques
• Develop relationships with adjacencies (Support)
Triangles are tasks. Blue means requested
from my manager; orange tasks come from me

5. 5
2011 Opportunity: Director: Live Site Quality
Cultivate Testing Culture

6. 6
2013 : QE / PM : End-to-End Solutions
• ScrumMaster for the team
• Come up with scenarios
• Run the OOSLA program
• Triage bugs
• Influence the design
• Demo to other teams
• Foster adoption

7. 7
• Evangelize the framework standards
• Coordinate with Documentation team
• Make the standards easy to use
• Host office hours
• Triage bugs in the platform, drive closure
• Analyze and drive environment fidelity
• Run the OOSLA report
2014 : QE PM: Commerce OS
Blue triangles mean the task was requested
from my manager; orange ones are my ideas

8. 8
2015 Opportunity: Quality Evangelist
• Host a bi-weekly discussion series
• Run the weekly test leads meeting
• Plan and coordinate events
• Create a quality-centric monthly
newsletter
• Look for patterns and practices
• Attend quality engineer meetings from
across the org
• Talk to customers
• Define “Engineering Excellence”
• Run the OOSLA report
Blue triangles mean the task was requested
from my manager; orange ones are my ideas

9. 9
• Continue the bi-weekly discussion series
• Run the weekly operations meeting
• Maintain the newsletter
• Continue to attend quality engineer meetings
from across the org
• Plan and coordinate team events
• Start a SLACK channel
• Help with Agile Transformation
• Align with efforts in other initiatives
• Build an initiative core team
• Administer the culture activity platform
2016: Engineering Excellence Lead
Blue triangles mean the task was requested
from my manager; orange ones are my ideas

10. From the book “Explore It!” by
Elisabeth Hendrickson
Engineering Excellence Domains

11. Tester Live Site Quality Excellence
Program Manager Practice
Evangelist Leader
Testing
(mechanics)
• Creating feature models
• Having test ideas
• Questioning
• Product and project issues
• Concerns & risks
• Participating in bug bashes
• Reproducing bugs from Support
• Evaluation: Matching what is expected
or desired to what is actually happening
Discovery • What is this thing?
• Where should we go
today?
• How does this work?
• Finding other factors no one else has
• Looking at a bigger piece of the puzzle
• Finding out where we may be broken if
conditions change (i.e. Anticipating)
Storytelling • Writing a bug report
• Writing a status report
• Talking at standup
• Creating scenarios for
testing
• Creating reports, but testing the data
and user expectations
• Helping others tell THEIR story
(newsletter)
• Make it easy to tell stories (e.g
newsletter)
Testing as a process of optimizing attention

12. What is a Role?
“A person's allotted share, part, or duty in life and society; the character,
place, or status assigned to or assumed by a person.” [Oxford English
Dictionary]
1. A task someone is currently performing.
(“My role is checking this output.”)
2. A task associated with a contract.
(“The testing role is unstaffed.”)
3. Some element in relation to other elements.
(“What role does Slack play in your team?”)

13. Scope (what the role covers)
 Responsibilities
 What depends on it
 What it depends on
Power (what the role influences)
 Authority/Sponsorship
 What roles control it
 What roles it controls
Value (what the role does for people)
 Specific problems solved
 Necessity to organization
 Desirability to others
 Prestige for actor
Cost (what the role takes from people)
 Cost of the actor, equipment, and materials
 Cost to accommodate the role
 Cost due to other roles becoming complacent
Requirements (what role/actor needs)
 Environment & tools
 Skills & knowledge
 Motivation
 Outside support
Openness (how actors relate to it)
 Ownership & commitment
 Casual shareability
 Informality
 Interruptability
 Simplicity
 Legibility
Presence (when & where it operates)
 Persistence
 Responsiveness
 Disruptiveness
Commitment (acceptance of duty)
 Investment of energy
 Accountability
Competence (ability to perform)
 Study and practice
 Self-evaluation
Readiness (operational status)
 Anticipating events
 Adapting to new conditions
 Maintaining efficiency
 Troubleshooting
Coordination (relating to other roles)
 Mission negotiation
 Resource negotiation
 Helping and accepting help
 Respecting agreements
 Failover strategy
 Status reporting
 Delivery
Dimensions
Of
Role
Expectations
Of
Actors
Elements of Role
http://bit.ly/2c062wN

14. Introducing “Rolegrams”
Elements of Roles
Contract: an expectation to behave a certain way or
perform some service
Person: capable of behaving certain ways and
performing services
Task/Duty: some activity that solves a problem
Boundary object: an artifact serving as a medium of
exchange between people or roles

15. Types of Contracts
Explicit Contract: an explicit agreement or formal protocol
Fuzzy Contract: an unspoken or vague agreement; informal
protocol
Open Contract: an agreement involving actors who may come and go

16. Types of Tasks/Duties
Formal: a duty knowingly performed and acknowledged; a task
performed in some systematic way
Fuzzy: duty not explicitly defined but also not optional; or a task that
is performed, but not in a systematic way
Conditional or Optional: an explicitly defined task or duty that is not
necessarily required

17. Actors and Roles
Actor: Person fulfilling contract
Roles
(unstaffed)
Socially Competent Actor: Person who requires tacit knowledge/skill
in order to perform well.
Mechanistic Actor: Person or machine who requires explicit
knowledge/skill only in order to perform well.

18. Thinking with Rolegrams
When you see a triangle, think:
- Who is doing this? Then where is the circle?
- What other tasks need doing? Should there be more triangles?
- Is this a duty? Then it needs a rectangle around it.
- Is this reasonably formal or is it fuzzy? Is it optional?
When you see a circle, think:
- Is there an agreement to do something? Then where is the rectangle and triangle?
- Is this person also doing other things? Then where are those triangles?
- Who SPECIFICALLY is this actor? Is it always the same person?
- Does this actor need to be a human or can a tool do it?
- How does this person get prepared or trained for this role?
When you see a square, think:
- Is there an actor in this role? Then where is the circle?
- Are there specific required tasks? Duties? Then where are the triangles?
- Is this agreement formal or fuzzy? Open or closed?
- What inputs or outputs are involved? Where are the hexagons?
When you see a hexagon, think:
- What form does this object take?
- Are there other boundary objects? Where are those hexagons?
- Is this used internally to the role, externally, or both?
- Does this mean different things to different roles?

19. Example #1
“I’ll test the latest bug fixes in this build.”
Tester
Agreement to test
Testing
new
bug
reports
build
fixes

20. Example #2
“Download the new build and help us find a bug.”
Bug Bash Participation
Testing
new
bug
reports
build

21. Roles as nets:
heuristics for self-management

22. QUESTIONS?

23. Mr. Deep vs Mr. Wide
“I am a {specialist}, dammit” “I am a {generalist}, dammit”
Obsessed
Territorial
Narrow
Uncaring
That guy is… But I am…
Available
Collaborative
Versatile
Caring
Dedicated
Responsible
Skilled
Caring
I am…
Distracted
Unreliable
Incompetent
Uncaring
But That guy is…
Energy
Dependability
Skill
Attitude

24. Mr. Deep vs Mr. Wide
“I am a security tester” “I am a tester”
Energy
Dependability
Skill
Attitude
Obsessed
Territorial
Narrow
Uncaring
That guy is… But I am…
Available
Collaborative
Versatile
Caring
Dedicated
Responsible
Skilled
Caring
I am…
Distracted
Unreliable
Incompetent
Uncaring
But That guy is…

25. Why do some people think a role
is a prison or a fortress?
This happens when role is
defined as the only things
you do and what no one
else does.
HIGH SOCIAL DISTANCE

26. So, what if we eliminate roles?
You have probably experienced this.

27. I like to think of roles this way.
A role is like a villa. It is a semi-private space. Someone
dwells in it. Someone is responsible. But visitors may
come and help.
FLEXIBLE
SOCIAL DISTANCE
• Devs help testers.
• Testers help devs.
• But testers are
ACCOUNTABLE for test
process.