Ownership

level 8

No ownership responsibility yet: this person is learning and being actively developed by others.

level 9

Owns their own tasks with guidance: plans and executes but doesn’t (regularly) plan and is not fully responsible for quality

level 10

• Owns their own tasks without guidance: Ownership = responsible for estimation, planning, quality, and executing
• Asks product owner for clarification, perhaps with hesitation, prior to starting to program, when requirements are unclear.
• Asks for help from supervisor or other developers when unsure about how to proceed. However, prior to asking for help, does some research into what the problem and potential solutions are and summarizes the issue prior to interrupting others.
• Participates in sprint planning, providing input on both scope and priority as they understand it at this level and time in their career. For example, if the dev perceives the priority of tasks to be incorrect, she will suggest a new prioritization for a reason.

level 11

• Track record of task and small project ownership
• Is aware of client needs and goals and adapts accordingly
• they know at all times how the client has defined success and if not will ask. They will also use that definition to drive how they work and be constantly challenging decisions if they do not reflect how they understand success. The typical quality vs time conundrum. They will also communicate this clearly to the client … if you need this by Friday I can only do it this way … this means that in future … at any time the developer can explain how success has been defined, will question it and the way they work will be defined by it.
• At this level developers are reliable. They do what they say they’ll do (but may still be off on estimates). For example, if they say they’ll get back to you, they get back to you. If they receive an email directed at them, they reply within a reasonable amount of time.
• At this level developers are able to rephrase tasks and ideas in their own words to demonstrate their understanding (or lack of) of a given task. For example, if a user story is “I as a user can leave a comment on a post so that my voice can be heard by the community.” the developer might rephrase as “Add a feature that allows users to comment on posts. This implies creating a Comment object and a relationship to both Posts and Users.” and might follow up with a question: “Should comments be deleted when the Post or User is deleted?”
• Demonstrates curiosity by asking about issues that are not assigned to her but that are of interest, possibly because they could impact her work.

level 12

Fully owns a project (consisting of multiple developers)

• (Always) Identifies who will work on the project and what they will do. This could be the result of consensus or a decision by a single person
• Is (always) reponsible for QA on the project (which means you will choose the QA processes that will be followed and will make sure the process get followed, that the code passes QA)
• Communicates regularly with the PM / Client on project progress and risks
• Anticipates potential issues with the code or solution and plans work accordingly (ex.: internal IT department of client has to approve everything. In response, estimates include extra time for fixing issues spotted by Sonar reports. Ex: Client states they do not need to rank well in Google. In response, we still follow best practices and estimate and price accordingly so that 6 months down the road when Google does matter, the work is already done.

level 13

Someone who understands what ownership of a project really means - it does not mean working long hours, but understanding the business goals of the project and the client. This person will not only feel confident to push back on ideas and offer their opinion but also suggest new ideas and look at the project from a business perspective rather than just the task/s at hand. Typically the client will want to have long conversations with this person to bounce ideas, flesh out ideas they have in their head and discuss viability of potential ideas they have. The client will feel that this person fully understands WHY they are doing the project and will see them as a partner rather than a developer.

• Is driven by client goals and will proactively suggest improvements rather than just doing as instructed

Has a consistent record of very strong ownership

Asks the right question

level 14

• management
• architects
• something else