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Scope of Roles

This document describes the overall responsibilities of each role on a project team. For more detail on each role, please see their respective runbooks. Anyone participating in a project team has discretion to comment on any features including frontend and backend architecture and implementation, UI/UX designs, and any other internal discussions.  

Tech Lead Role

  • Project Scoping: Meet with the non-profit organization to understand their project needs and determine the appropriate tech stack, given their requirements and your team’s abilities. The VP Projects and your Product Manager will be available to support you throughout this stage. You will also be expected to meet consistently with the NPO to ensure that you are meeting their requirements. 

  • Project Planning: The goal is to implement an Agile (Scrum) project methodology that emphasizes iterative development, frequent communication, and team collaboration to deliver high-quality products. Setting bi-weekly goals for your developers and dividing features into manageable tasks will help enable consistent progress.

  • Building Team Culture: Blueprint and its teams should be seen as more than just a “job”. While the work may be challenging, we want this to be an enjoyable experience for all of those involved. The Exec Team will host GBMs and events throughout the semester to help build the culture within Blueprint as a whole. While most of your team’s work may be done asynchronously, implementing practices such as pair programming, or hosting live in-person work sessions can prevent your team from feeling isolated.

Tech Lead Responsibilities

  • Communication
    • Attend Monthly NPO meetings 
      • Walk though feature/progress reports
      • Ask releveant technical questions
    • Project Team Meetings
      • Address any technical issues raised by devs
      • Decide technical implementation of features/tass 
      • Delegate tasks 
  • Features
    • Review, comment, and approve PRs
    • Delegate tasks
    • Complete assigned tasks

Product Manager Role

  • NPO Communication: They will be the team's primary channel of communication with the assigned non-profit organization (NPO). You are responsible for ensuring that your team is meeting the NPO’s specifications. One important tip is to consider guiding the discussion from the target user’s perspective.

  • Project Planning: The goal is to implement an Agile (Scrum) project methodology. Alongside your Technical Lead, you will assist in the bi-weekly/monthly planning to ensure that your team meets your goals.

  • Building Team Culture: As much as this is an opportunity to develop something tangible, it is also an opportunity to be part of a community where we can learn from each other! At the end of the day, your team members are students, and we want everyone’s experience to be rewarding and fun. While most of your team’s work may be done asynchronously, implementing practices such as pair programming, or hosting live in-person work sessions can prevent your team from feeling isolated.

  • (Optional) Developing: The product manager is a leadership role, so the aforementioned responsibilities would be expected, however you are more than welcome to assist in the developing to help build your own skill set and be more informed about the project.

Product Manager Responsibilities
  • Communication
    • Communication Channels 
      • Manage Discord project team channel 
      • Facilitate communication between NPOs and Project Team 
        • Via Email, Slack, Discord, at PMs discretion
      • Manage task organization software(Github Taskboard, Jira, etc...) 
    • Meetings
      • Organize and lead Project Team Meetings
        • Create agenda
          • Standup
          • Goals of meeting
          • Task delegation
          • Iterate feedback from NPO
      • Organize NPO Meetings
        • Feature/progress report 
        • Ask questions regarding:
          • Features
          • Timeline
          • Scope of Project
  • Features
    • Determine priority of features 
    • Write Masters feature issues/tasks
      • To be populate by Tech Leads 
    • Delegate tasks
  • Quality Assurance
    • Test Features for functionality
      • Write according bug/fix tasks that address necessary changes 
    • Approve UI/UX and designs
      • Test functionality of buttons, hyperlinks, embedded videos, etc.. 

Developer Role

  • Implementing Features: The specific technical skills you need will be dependent on your project specs, but as we are expecting to build web-based applications, general frontend and backend skills are necessary. Though projects will come with their unique learning curves, your team is balanced with diverse skills, and your Technical Lead will try their best to ensure you are working on something that you are both comfortable and interested in!

  • Practicing Agile Methodology: Agile is a project management methodology that emphasizes iterative development, frequent communication, and team collaboration to deliver high-quality products. This is used amongst many tech companies, but no worries if you are unfamiliar with it: we’ll be teaching and practicing this with our projects!

  • Documentation: Not only is it important for yourself and your team to understand the components of your project, but your documentation will be key in the hand-off process to the NPOs.

Developer Responsibilities
  • Communication
    • Attend all project team meetings
      • Provide progress report on tasks
      • Ask necessary questions
      • Receive task assignments 
  • Features
    • Complete assigned tasks
    • Review, comment, and approve PRs 

Designer Responsibilities

  • Wireframes and Styling Guides: You will create wireframes (mock-up layouts of the application requested) and decide styling using any method you’re comfortable with. Keep in mind, you will be working closely with the Product Manager to ensure your designs fall under the NPO’s interests/branding, but we still encourage you to be creative with it!

  • Content: You will confirm all the content being displayed on the website with the NPO. (The NPO should handle the bulk of this.) This could range from text, images, and additional graphics.

  • (Optional) Developing: As a Designer your main responsibilities are what are outlined above. Nonetheless, you are more than welcome to assist in the development to help build your own skill set and be more informed about the project!

Designer Responsibilities
  • Communcation
    • Attend all Project Team meetings
    • Attend necessary NPO meetings(summer, early fall) 
  • Features
    • Complete UI/UX designs of project
    • Complete task assignment
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