May 8, 2021
In our agile world, we often divide up tasks longitudinally; that is, along goal-oriented lines. This results in mini-projects like “put documentation on the website” or “put a contact form on the website”.
This is an intuitive and low-effort management exercise, which can have great results. And I love how it lets you put trust in people to figure things out. The problem is, to assign a directly responsible individual (DRI), they have to be the right person to make decisions about every part of the project: from the marketing copy to the coding to the deployment of the changes. If they don't? Not only can it be very frustrating for them, but output and quality of work can suffer. Not to mention that getting things back on track can eat up valuable time for other members of the team.
Alternatively, you can divide tasks latitudinally - along their natural, functional lines. These lines have to be felt out, since they depend on the nature of the types of work in
