Software is created by people with different interests and skills. A healthy team environment enables effective collaboration and requires a culture engaged in creativity and positive change. Roles are the human face of the software development process but traditional descriptions can be constraining. New points of view on traditional software project roles are needed to leverage collaboration instead of increasing communication channels.

Roles do not represent individual responsibilities over tasks or deliverables but are instead “hats” that people can put on when working together. Each role is not limited to describing the primary performer of some task, instead the roles include a perspective on collaboration by providing additional performers for each task. Playing one or more of these roles can help teams express different points of view when creating a solution. This perspective on roles empowers a new generation of software development processes, more focused on people interaction. Nobody does great software alone but a team working together can do extraordinary things.

This page allows you to navigate the published configuration from the perspective of roles. You can see the roles that have been included, and visit each role page to see its definition and relationships to other elements.  

Main roles in OpenUP and their interaction