Contract

Description

Limitations

Primary

The Primary team is responsible for all work associated with an activity that is not undertaken by assisting teams. The primary team is responsible for all coordination generated by dependenices to and from the activity. The nominal effort described in the activity will be attempted by this team, leading to the total actual effort for work and communication effort. 

Only one team can be primary on an activity

Decision

The Decision team is responsible for making decisions in response to exceptions such as quality issues on the activity. Typically if decision making is not performed by the primary team it is performed by a team higher in the OBS. Decision making effort is determined by the simulator based on the work effort and complexity. Hint: accurately modeling decision making can identify bottlenecks in the management of project quality issues.

Only one team can be decision on an activity

Quality

A Quality team is responsible for testing to ensure that the activity output is free of errors. A quality team can trigger decisions on rework for an activity during simulation. Quality effort is determined by the simulator based on the work effort and complexity.

Zero or more quality teams on an activity; however, 1 or more recommended.(Activities with errors may never complete satisfactorily if no team is catching errors).

Assist

An assisting team lowers the primary team's work effort on an activity. With assisting teams a primary team may perform no work on the activity (the primary team will have to communicate, though). The amount of work assigned to assisting teams is determined by the simulator based on the team's availability and other activities' priorities

A primary team cannot assist on the same activity