Handbook
Spiral Model — roles (prescriptive)
The Spiral Model defines roles around **risk management** and **stakeholder commitment**. Teams are typically more structured than in lightweight Agile but share accountability for risk-informed decis
Spiral Model — roles (prescriptive)
The Spiral Model defines roles around risk management and stakeholder commitment. Teams are typically more structured than in lightweight Agile but share accountability for risk-informed decisions.
1. Project manager
| Aspect | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Accountable for | Spiral planning, schedule, resource allocation, stakeholder communication |
| Archetypes | Orchestrator (primary) |
| Key outputs | Spiral plans, milestone evidence packages, status reports, risk register coordination |
Drives the cadence of spirals and ensures anchor-point milestones receive proper stakeholder attention.
2. Risk analyst / chief engineer
| Aspect | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Accountable for | Identifying, analyzing, and proposing resolution strategies for top risks in Q2 |
| Archetypes | Quality advocate (primary), Orchestrator (risk coordination) |
| Key outputs | Risk register, risk analysis reports, prototype/simulation recommendations, risk resolution evidence |
May be a dedicated role or combined with chief architect on smaller teams. The critical requirement is that someone owns systematic risk analysis each spiral.
3. Chief architect / technical lead
| Aspect | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Accountable for | Architecture evolution across spirals; technical feasibility; design integrity |
| Archetypes | Implementer (architecture), Quality advocate (structural integrity) |
| Key outputs | Architecture documents, design decisions (ADRs), prototype architectures, NFR strategies |
Prescriptive rule: Architecture should be validated in early spirals (prototypes, proof-of-concept) before committing to full-scale build in later spirals.
4. Development team
| Aspect | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Accountable for | Q3 execution — design, code, test, integrate within the spiral's scope |
| Archetypes | Implementer (primary), Quality advocate (testing) |
| Key outputs | Working increments, test results, build artifacts |
Team composition may change across spirals (e.g. more prototyping specialists early, more production engineers later).
5. Stakeholders / sponsors
| Aspect | Guidance |
|---|---|
| Accountable for | Funding commitment, objective validation, go/no-go at anchor-point milestones |
| Archetypes | Sponsor proxy, Steer |
| Key outputs | Commitment decisions, constraint definitions, acceptance of risk trade-offs |
Prescriptive rule: Stakeholders must be engaged at anchor-point milestones (LCO, LCA, IOC). Passive sponsorship undermines the risk-driven model.
6. Ceremony participation matrix
| Ceremony | PM | Risk analyst | Architect | Dev team | Stakeholders |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spiral planning (Q1) | R | R | R | O | O |
| Risk review (Q2) | R | R | R | O | O |
| Development sync (Q3) | O | O | R | R | — |
| Anchor-point review (Q4) | R | R | R | R | R |
| Prototype demo | R | O | R | R | R |
| Retrospective | R | O | O | R | — |
7. Anti-patterns (by role)
| Anti-pattern | Why it hurts | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No dedicated risk analyst | Risk analysis becomes superficial or skipped | Assign explicit risk-analysis accountability |
| Stakeholders delegate anchor-point decisions | Resources committed without informed consent | Require sponsor presence at LCO/LCA/IOC |
| Architect absent from early spirals | Architecture not validated before scale | Architect participates from spiral 1 |
| PM treats all spirals as identical phases | Loses the adaptive, risk-driven nature | Vary spiral scope and approach based on risk profile |
8. Links
Canonical source
Edit https://github.com/autowww/blueprints/blob/main/sdlc/methodologies/spiral/roles.md first; regenerate with docs/build-handbook.py.