6 roles you will find in most technology teams

#1 Developers 

These are often treated like the rockstars of a technology team. It’s worth noting that they may be referred to as engineers. In short, they are the people who write the code.

#2 Testers

The unsung heroes of most technology teams. Unfortunately for testers, they are the ones who have to relay the bad news that a particular feature or release candidate is not working. They spend their days scrutinizing what the developers build and trying to poke holes in it.

#3 Designers

Often a designer will sit outside of the technology team but nonetheless, they are integral to producing any kind of aesthetic updates. Developers and designers may often find themselves sitting side by side in front of a monitor arguing over the importance of a line being a pixel up or down. In short, designers produce imagery and documents which stipulate how a page or feature should look.

#4 Architects

This person can be thought of as an extension of the developers. In many cases, the architect will have some development responsibilities also. They are the ones who determine how developers should build something.

#5 Business Analyst

These people are often the most informed about how the entire business functions. Their primary role is to translate a business requirement into technical instruction. Typically, the head of department x will tell the business analyst what they want in terms of functionality. The business analyst will scrutinize the request to such a degree that both parties may end up agreeing something else entirely is actually needed. Once both agree on what it is that should be built, the business analyst will work with the architect to define a set of instructions.

#6 Scrum Master

You need to learn Scrum for this one (check out Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by J J Sutherland). In short, this person keeps the train on the tracks. They coordinate any activities needed for the wider team in order to ensure steady progress continues, they receive updates from the team about any blockers they are facing and they attempt to remove those blockers to facilitate unimpeded productivity of the team.