Too Many Roles, Too Little Value: Why Software Delivery Feels Broken—and How to Fix It

Too many roles, too little value. That’s what it often feels like when trying to get things done in today’s software delivery organizations. Meetings are packed. Documents fly back and forth. Titles multiply. But the actual delivery of value? Sluggish at best.

This isn’t just annoying—it’s a sign of something deeper: a system that has evolved around separation, not collaboration.

📜 Where It All Started: The Business-IT Divide

For decades, organisations treated “business” and “IT” as separate worlds. Business made the decisions, IT implemented them. Strategy lived in one tower, code in another. It made sense at the time—software was seen as a support function, not a driver of value.

But as software ate the world, the cracks started to show.

Waterfall development cemented the handover mindset. Then came outsourcing, pushing IT even further away from core business conversations. To cope with complexity, new roles were invented: analysts, project managers, release coordinators, scrum masters, product owners, delivery leads… the list grew long, fast.

Many of these roles were well-intentioned. But instead of fixing the root cause—separation—they often added more layers.

⚠️ The Consequences Today

The results? A delivery ecosystem that’s heavy on roles and light on results.

• Too much coordination, too little creation. A growing percentage of people are talking about the work, not doing it.
• Slow feedback loops. Ideas have to pass through too many checkpoints before reaching users.
• Blurry accountability. When so many own the outcome, no one really does.
• Burnout and frustration. Engineers feel micromanaged, while coordinators feel undervalued.
• Change resistance. Every role becomes a territory to defend—even if it’s no longer needed.

The worst part? Everyone is working hard. But the structure is working against them.

🔄 What We Can Do About It

This isn’t a blame game. It’s a design challenge.

To deliver value faster and more effectively, we need to rethink the structure around the work—not just the work itself.

✅ Reunite Business and Tech

Create truly cross-functional teams with shared goals and end-to-end ownership. Stop calling it “the business” vs. “IT”—there’s only the team.

✅ Simplify the Operating Model

Too many roles are the result of a bloated or fragmented operating model. In this earlier post, I explored how operating models and ways of working intersect—and how misalignment between the two can create unnecessary complexity.

The fix? Align your structure, governance, and decision-making mechanisms with the actual flow of work. Simplify layers, clarify responsibilities, and ensure your ways of working enable—not restrict—the teams delivering value.

✅ Clarify Value Streams

Map how value flows through your system. Then remove the roles, reviews, and rituals that get in its way.

A good starting point is looking at your team workflows—how work actually gets done, not just how it’s supposed to. In this post about workflows, I outline how clear, aligned workflows can bring order, focus, and flow to your delivery.

Understanding the flow of work makes it easier to see where roles add value—and where they simply add friction.

✅ Shift from Roles to Responsibility

Ask: what decisions need to be made, and who is closest to the context? Empower those people—not those farthest from the work.

✅ Focus on Impact, Not Activity

It’s easy to confuse movement with progress. But activity doesn’t equal value.

In this post on Impact Mapping, I break down how to connect outcomes to actions—making sure your work drives real results instead of just outputs.

Use this kind of thinking to prioritize efforts, guide decisions, and hold yourself accountable to actual impact.

👥 What About the People in Those Roles?

This is the part we can’t skip: change affects people.

If we reduce or eliminate certain roles, we have a responsibility to support the humans in them.

• Reskill, don’t reject. Many “coordination” roles have deep domain knowledge. Help them transition to coaching, enablement, or product roles.
• Redefine the value. Some roles can evolve from gatekeepers to guides—from managing the process to improving it.
• Make space for honesty. Let people reflect: What value do I bring? Where can I grow next?
• Honor the past, then move forward. Many of these roles were created in good faith. It’s okay to say thank you—and then adapt.

🧭 Closing: Clarity Over Complexity

We didn’t end up with too many roles overnight. It happened step by step, in response to real challenges. But now we need a new response.

One rooted in clarity, not complexity. In collaboration, not separation.

Ask yourself:
👉 What roles in your organisation exist only because of how things used to work?
👉 And what’s possible if you removed the friction and let value flow again?

Let’s make space for fewer roles—and more results.