The typical roles in Kanban can be adapted by incorporating additional responsibilities when applying Kanban principles to a DevOps environment. The Kanban Team, as described in section 3.1, consists of the Product Owner, Kanban Manager, and Team Members.
Product Owner—In a DevOps environment, the Product Owner may have the following additional responsibilities, in addition to the standard duties associated with Kanban:
- Creating, Adding, and Prioritizing User Stories: The Product Owner is responsible for creating, adding, and prioritizing User Stories in the Kanban Backlog (or alternatively in the Prioritized Product Backlog) if User Stories are needed. It is important to note that defining User Stories is optional when applying the Kanban method.
- Defining Acceptance Criteria: The Product Owner defines the Acceptance Criteria for each User Story and ensures that the team understands the business value of the work they are doing.
Kanban Manager— When applying Kanban to DevOps processes, in addition to the typical responsibilities associated with Kanban, the Kanban Manager may have the following additional responsibilities:
- Pulling User Stories: Pulling User Stories from the Kanban Backlog (or Prioritized Product Backlog) to the Kanban Board for the team to work on.
- Estimating and Targeting: Ensuring that all User Stories are estimated by the team and have a specified target completion date before they are worked on.
- Reviewing and Submitting: Reviewing and submitting completed User Stories to the Product Owner for approval.
- Incident Management: Acting as the Incident Manager, responsible for reviewing and managing incidents and issues as they arise.
- Release Management: Serving as the Release Manager to help streamline DevOps releases.
Team Members— When applying Kanban to DevOps processes, in addition to the typical responsibilities associated with Kanban implementation, the Kanban Team Members may have the following additional responsibilities:
- Estimating User Stories: Estimating User Stories and specifying target completion dates.
- Creating Task Groups and Tasks: Creating Task Groups and Tasks to deliver the User Stories pulled into the Kanban Backlog by the Kanban Manager (from the Prioritized Product Backlog set up by the Product Owner).