Iteration Lead

Each feature iteration has a lead who is personally responsible for its delivery. Only this person is entitled to complete the development stage of an iteration and is also responsible for other developers working on it. In the Swinlanes UI, this is visually represented by the fact that only the lead’s card shows stage indicators.

The idea behind this is that team members and stakeholders do not need context about how a task moves back and forth; they only need to know when the deliverable code will be ready for users. Everything else is not important for them and is handled internally by developers.

The iteration lead is also responsible for breaking down product requirements into developer lanes. We recommend using the ‘Reversed Jenga’ principle: after establishing the architectural contract, developers choose the most distant parts of the feature to work on independently for as long as possible to avoid merge conflicts. The initial part, usually outlining the general file structure and interfaces, is typically done by the iteration lead shortly before other developers start.

The lead takes full responsibility for delivery and also has the final say in any disputes over technical questions or implementation architecture.