Roles, Actors and Jurisdictions

The BPT loop is not a free-for-all. Different roles work inside different segments. That fact defines jurisdiction — the boundary within which a role operates, decides, and is accountable.

Jurisdiction is not hierarchy. A Business Leader is not senior to an Engineer in the loop. They operate in different segments with different concerns. EA is the only role whose jurisdiction is the whole organisation.

Roles and Jurisdictions

Roles	Jurisdiction	Activities
Business Leaders, Clients, Product Owners, BAs	Business	Declares products, owns outcomes
Product Owners, BAs, QAs	Product	Bridges Business declarations and Technology capabilities — the alignment point
Engineers, Developers, DevOps	Technology	Implements what Product defines
Enterprise Architects	Organisation	Overarching — governs the meta-layer, guides all transitions without bottlenecking

BA — Business Analyst. QA — Quality Assurance.

Roles may appear in more than one segment. A Product Owner sits in both Business and Product. A BA may work across all three. What changes is the nature of the work — declaring in Business, aligning in Product. The jurisdiction defines the work, not the person.

Enterprise Architecture jurisdiction

EA’s jurisdiction is the whole organisation — not a segment, not a project. This is what makes it the governing meta-layer.

Defines the principles that guide all four BPT transitions (Require / Develop / Deploy / Evaluate)
Ensures Product decisions maintain Business-Technology coherence
Governs without bottlenecking the cycle
Measures alignment health through Evaluate feedback
Runs the ICL ADM wheel — the governance project container that spans the full Taxonomy

EA does not implement, does not manage products, and does not operate infrastructure. It governs the structure within which all of those happen.

Why this works

Organisations at sufficient CMM level have implicit governance structures — roles respect boundaries because the organisation is mature enough to enforce them
Product management becomes the operational manifestation of architecture — the alignment point is staffed and accountable
The loop tests architecture decisions against reality continuously — Evaluate is not optional
The question “Is Business aligned with Technology?” becomes measurable rather than political

Segment naming and role naming

The BPT segments are named Business, Product, and Technology. The roles inside the Technology segment are Engineers and DevOps — Engineering describes the roles, Technology is the segment. This distinction matters when reading diagrams and deliverables: the segment name is always Technology.

Definitions and terms may appear in singular or plural depending on the size of the organisation. It is rare for there to be only one product or one team. The model scales — see One wheel or many.

© dbj@dbj.org , CC BY SA 4.0