Roles
The Scaled Agile DevOps Maturity Framework defines a comprehensive organizational hierarchy where every person knows their responsibilities, every responsibility has a named owner, and every owner is accountable through clearly defined reporting lines. Roles in SADMF are not fluid or self-organizing; they are precisely defined, carefully separated, and rigorously enforced. When everyone knows exactly what they are allowed to do, nobody wastes time doing what they are not supposed to. This Systems Thinking extends from the highest levels of strategic leadership down to the individual Code Engineer typing at their keyboard.
The organizational structure is built on three pillars: the Admiral’s Transformation Office (ATO) provides strategic direction and accountability, the System of Authority (SOA) implants and enforces the framework through external consultants, and the System of Service (SOS) delivers software through the DevOps Release Convoy. Within this structure, specialized roles handle code review, testing, source management, architecture governance, change approval, and status reporting, ensuring that no individual is burdened with responsibilities outside their defined scope. The result is an organization where accountability is absolute, oversight is comprehensive, and every activity is performed by the role specifically designed to perform it.
The Roles
Leadership
The command-and-control center ensuring everyone achieves the goals of SADMF through centralized direction, assessment, and accountability!
The senior executive ensuring plan adherence through daily publication of the Feature Completion Ratio!
The delivery commander who collects status, ensures framework compliance, and authorizes fleet deployment!
Review & Governance
CRAP ensures that only thoroughly reviewed and unanimously approved changes reach the Convoy!
CSET performs all code reviews so that Code Engineers can focus on typing code instead of reading it!
DIAT validates the work of QA to ensure that testing itself meets the organization's quality standards!
The EARB maintains the Book of Names, ensuring all Code Engineers use only approved words when naming things!
The RBRB reviews the decisions of EARB and CRAP, ensuring that the reviewers are themselves properly reviewed!
Engineering
YAML experts who ensure Code Engineers never waste time on build concerns and can focus entirely on feature delivery!
The backbone of a SAD implementation, transforming requirements into machine-readable instructions quickly and quietly!
The mid-level manager who tracks feature progress and ensures their assigned Feature Team delivers on time!
The group of Code Engineers assembled per Convoy to deliver a feature at maximum throughput from day one!
Manual testing specialists who serve as the final arbiter of requirements, because the only TRUE way to test is by hand!
Former great problem solvers dedicated to maintaining alarm work, reporting, customizations, and chasing backported feature parity across maintenance branches!
The SMT authorizes branches, merges code, and resolves all conflicts so Code Engineers never have to!
Dedicated specialists who write unit tests after code is delivered, because Code Engineers should focus on writing code!
Product & Strategy
The undivided Single Point of Contact for a product, shared across multiple COPs who collectively own accountability for decisions no single person could survive alone!
The DOUCHE owns the DevOps Process Binder and holds all teams accountable to the Right Way of doing DevOps!
PDAC ensures every stakeholder's voice is heard in product decisions, preventing any single perspective from dominating the backlog!
The team of teams accountable for implanting SADMF in your organization through contractors and consultants!
The team of teams accountable for achieving deadlines and shipping code through servant leadership and self-governance!
See Also
- DevOps Release Convoy for how roles operate within the delivery cycle
- Convoy Ceremonies for the ceremonies each role participates in
- Practices for the processes roles execute
- Metrics for how role performance is measured
- Certifications for role-specific certifications
- Scaling AI for how roles interact with AI-generated code
- Lean Management for the principle behind organizational layering
- Everyone is Responsible for individual accountability across all roles
- Standardized Environment Provisioning for the SEPAW practice executed by Build Engineers