Glossary: actors, stakeholders, and statements of intent

Actor and Role

An Actor is a person, organization, or system that holds one or more roles and initiates or takes part in activities; it may be internal or external to the organization, like a supplier interacting with the supply chain. Role has two senses. The first is the usual or expected behavior of an actor, the part it plays in a process or event; an actor may have several roles. The second is the part a person plays in an organization and the contribution made through skills, knowledge, experience, and abilities.

Stakeholder and Concern

A Stakeholder is an individual, team, organization, or category of these, with an interest in a system. A whole category, such as 'retail customers', can therefore be a stakeholder. A Concern is an interest in the system relevant to one or more stakeholders: performance, reliability, security, distribution, or evolvability. Concerns may determine whether the system is acceptable.

Communications and Stakeholder Management handles the needs of the Enterprise Architecture practice's stakeholders, as well as communication between the practice, its stakeholders, and the consumers of its services.

Requirement, Principle, Objective

These three terms express intent, but at different levels. The right reflex is to ask whether the statement can be verified, whether it guides decisions, or whether it sets a quantified, dated aim.

Example: 'Data is a shared asset' is a principle; 'Cut claims processing time by 20% by the end of 2027' is an objective; 'The portal shows the balance in under two seconds' is a requirement. One project often combines all three, each playing a different role in decisions.

• Requirement: an unambiguous statement of need, testable or measurable, and necessary for the result to be acceptable. 'The portal must be user-friendly' is not enough.
• Architecture Principle: a qualitative statement of intent the architecture should meet, such as 'data is a shared asset'.
• Objective: an organizational aim stated in a SMART way (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-bound), for example cutting a lead time by 20% by a given date.