What are the roles in a multidisciplinary team?

Teams can look very different for a variety of reasons, including the size of your organisation and the service or product being built.

In government, a service team is made up of people doing a variety of different roles. This is called a multidisciplinary team.

You can read about this in the government Service Manual.

Roles your team should have

Though teams vary and not every team will have every role, a government service usually has people with the following roles or skills working on it, either in the primary team or involved on a contract basis:

• product manager
• service owner (depending on the team – service owner as a distinct role is not always needed)
• delivery manager
• user researcher
• business analyst
• performance analyst
• content designer
• interaction designer
• service designer
• developer

All of these roles need to work together to successfully design, build and iterate a service that achieves the desired outcomes: meeting user needs and solving their problems.

We have already looked at responsibilities and skills of user researchers, but what about the rest of the team?

Product manager

Product managers are often the main point of contact between all of these team members and other groups within your organisation that have decision-making powers, such as senior management. They:

• represent the needs of their users, and balance these needs with the needs of the business and technology
• make sure the service fits in with the organisation’s priorities and achieves the right outcomes
• define what the future goal of the product or service is (often called the ‘product vision’)
• make sure the service meets user needs and is accessible to everyone evaluate technical, content and design solutions

If you would like to learn more about product management, Government Campus UK has a course here on FutureLearn – Introduction to Product Management.

Service owner

If your team has a service owner, they must have the decision-making authority to deliver on all aspects of a project. They also:

• look after operational aspects of the service, including any business change
• make sure that delivery teams, operations and policy are connected
• have responsibility for continually improving your service
• identify and minimise risks
• encourage the maximum possible take-up of your digital service

Delivery manager

Your delivery manager is responsible for:

• setting up the environment your team needs to build a user-centred service
• removing obstacles or ‘blockers’ to progress
• helping your team become better at organising their own work

Business analyst

A business analyst maps the ‘As Is’ (current state) and ‘To Be’ (improved future state) of business or department processes and translates research findings and business requirements into user stories. They also:

• help with user research and review data analytics to understand how a service is being used
• help set performance measures and monitoring changes to the service, reacting to them and suggesting improvements

Performance analyst

A performance analyst:

• creates frameworks to measure how well a product or service is performing
• analyses data and metrics to generate actionable insights and communicate these to stakeholders

Content designer

A content designer is responsible for the content in your service. Their role includes:

• developing content plans and strategies based on user needs
• writing clear, usable and accessible content in plain English
• iterating the content based on findings from user research

If you would like to know more about content design, Government Campus UK has a course here on FutureLearn – Introduction to Content Design.

Interaction designer

An interaction designer ensures products function properly when users interact or engage with them. They:

• design the product, making sure it is useful, usable and accessible
• work with developers to make sure standards of accessibility are maintained throughout the development process
• help develop prototypes to test and iterate their designs
• think of new and innovative ways to interact with users online so that users can access information and are able to provide the government with information about themselves when necessary

Service designer

Service designers design the end-to-end journey of a service, helping a user complete their goal and government deliver a policy intent. Their roles include:

• the creation of or change to transactions, products and content across both digital and offline channels provided by different parts of government
• problem solving, running workshops to help the team, and strategic work to help make sure the needs of users are prioritised
• designing end-to-end services, thinking about everything the user needs to do to complete a task, including the things that happen online, offline or in person

Developer

You need developers on your team to:

• build accessible software
• advise on whether your designs are technically possible
• write, maintain and test code (where there are no designated testers on the team) ensure information is collected and stored securely and that the service is resilient to load and cyber threat
• solve technical problems

In government, there is a wide variety of roles in digital and data. You can find more information in the Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework.

Task

Think about these roles. How do you think a user researcher might contribute to their responsibilities?

Share your thoughts and ideas below.