The personnel required to maintain the product
The roles and skills of the developer's team, the principles of continuity and confidentiality, and what personnel the client print shop needs.
Updated:
Keeping the product in service requires a team covering development, the operation of the environment and support, with a practical knowledge of printing. The roles below describe the required skills, not particular people; in a small team one person may cover several roles.
5.1. The roles in the developer's team
| Role | Responsibilities | Skills |
|---|---|---|
| Product owner | planning and prioritisation, the decision to release, the relationship with the client print shops, validation of functions against the real workflow | knowledge of a print shop's processes (price calculation, printing, finishing, delivery, invoicing), of online commerce and of the relevant legislation (VAT, invoicing, data protection) |
| Developer (client side and server side) | analysis, implementation, automated tests, code review, data migrations | modern client–server web development, databases, the interfaces of external providers (payments, couriers, email), web application security, version control; higher technical education or equivalent experience |
| Operations administrator | hosting, the release of versions, monitoring, backups and restoration, certificates and domains, incident response | systems and network administration, automation of releases, diagnosis of incidents |
| Support and launch specialist | answering requests, configuring stores at launch, importing the catalogue and the formulas, training the teams, taking in proposals | practical knowledge of printing and detailed knowledge of the admin panel, clear communication, rigorous documentation of every intervention |
| Documentation author and translator | the User guide, the Functional characteristics, the present document, the interface texts in Romanian, Russian and English | technical writing, knowledge of printing terminology in the three languages |
Qualities common to all the roles: the capacity for analysis and for learning new technologies and tools; communication with people who are not technical; rigour in working with data that represents the money of customers and of print shops; discretion regarding the stores' data.
5.2. Continuity
The critical procedures — releasing a version, rolling back to the previous version, restoring from a backup, configuring a new store, connecting an integration — are documented internally, so that no intervention depends on a single person. The code, the configuration of the environment and the documentation are kept under version control, with the complete history of changes.
5.3. Confidentiality and access to data
The developer's personnel access a print shop's data only for support, remediation or launch, to the extent strictly necessary and, where modifications are concerned, with the print shop's agreement. Access is personal and may be revoked; the credentials of external services entered by the print shop remain masked in the admin panel and are never requested in plain text. The personal data of end customers is processed on behalf of the print shop, in accordance with the policy published on its site.
5.4. The personnel of the client print shop
The print shop needs no programmers or system administrators. Operation requires:
- a store administrator, who configures the catalogue, the prices, the statuses, delivery, payments, the design and the team — with the knowledge described in Functional characteristics, 2.5;
- managers, operators and, where applicable, an accountant, who work in the admin panel within their roles, with ordinary browser skills and a knowledge of their own production workflow.
Training is provided at launch, together with the support specialist, on the basis of the User guide; after the launch, the documentation and support cover new situations.