Defining roles, responsibilities and impact for better collaboration
Any software project involves collaboration between various parties. Stakeholder mapping is an effective method for gaining a clear overview of all parties involved in a project and lays out their roles, responsibilities, their impact towards the project and how they should collaborate throughout the process.1
The figure below provides an overview of relationships between typical stakeholders in a recruitment process and their role in the design or management of a recruitment system, in particular the component that ranks candidates for a job during the screening stage. The IT Department (IT) is in a direct relationship with the Human Resources Department (HR). The HRD manages the current employees.. In this capacity, they should collect feedback on how new employees, (hired with the help of the AI system), will fit into the team. The Legal and Compliance Team (legal) assists the IT department (IT) in designing a system that is compliant with the law, while also providing guidance on how to verify that this compliance is maintained. The IT department (IT) could also collaborate with Software Vendors of the recruitment system for various services; thus, the management should make sure that the Software Vendors are trustworthy and comply with the law.
→ see more on stakeholder mapping: FINDHR Software Development Guide, section 2.2
Recommendations
Guidelines for stakeholder collaboration and involvement in the system’s design
- As a product manager, make sure to have a clear overview of the stakeholders involved, their roles and how they should collaborate, as well as their impact on the system’s design.
- Enable and encourage collaboration channels between various departments to ensure an interdisciplinary perspective on the design of the system.
- Tailor transparency and explainability to the specific needs of each stakeholder ( → see chapter #10).
- Ensure clear responsibility and accountability frameworks for compliance with anti-discrimination, AI and data protection laws, as the organisation is responsible for system outcomes.
- Foster complaint and redress processes for communication with all relevant stakeholders to involve them in the design process.
- Continuously monitor and update the recruitment system throughout its life cycle, considering stakeholders’ feedback and conforming to legal requirements.
- Tristancho, C. (2023)
