Awarding responsibilities in a small, but multi-leveled company

Question

Today, we stumbled upon an abstract problem due to the lack of experience. Five of us are starting a company, everything is carefully planned and organised, but... When we tried to split responsibilities between us for the activities and projects we so far have - we did not know in what effective and logic way to do so.

Thing is.. We as a company X have a few subset operations. A, B and C for example. A is dealing with web development and social media. B is our own project that we are developing. C is tourism counseling.

A then later on splits on different clients a1, a2, a3, projects and so on. So can C too in near future.

It is important to award one person to be responsible for a certain project, activity, etc.. But in this multi-leveled structure we just don't see the way how to do so, when does the responsibility of one level end, and when another one starts. Is a person responsible for A also responsible for a1 or does the responsibility end before branching into a1 and another person takes in?

Further on, how to keep track of it all? We are using Trello for simple task management, it would be amazing to somehow implement responsibility overview chart too.

Thank you for the time.

Answer 1

I would suggest not over-complicating, which is very easy to do. i.e. people might suggest that you need a RACI chart which equates to 'Responsible, Accountable, Consult, Inform' - this is probably too much...

Ownership is very important, you should have an owner for a business area i.e. A, B and C.

I suggest you follow a Scrum or Kanban development process. The tasks you have on your scrum board in trello should be labeled in catagories 'A, B and C'.

In your backlog column or 'to do' column leave all tasks un-assigned but in a prioritised list. When one of the 5 of you is ready to do some new work, pick off the top of the queue.

As you mature, develop teams under each 'A, B, C' business unit. Split the backlog by business unit.

You should have a daily stand-up meeting or 'scrum' and review three items 'what did you do yesterday, what are you going to do today, do you have any blockers'.

Finally review progress on a weekly basis with a status update for each area. Figure out what went well and what went badly (focusing on process). Take actions and adjust accordingly.

For further guidance and reading I'd recommend reading Amazon's leadership principles as they're excellent guides for running a business: http://www.amazon.com/Values-Careers-Homepage/b?node=239365011

And this model on scaling agile at Spotify: http://ucvox.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/113617905-scaling-agile-spotify-11.pdf