A role is a job performed within an organization. Some employees might perform more than one role. An organizational unit consists of roles. A role can also be played by different individuals within different Organizational Units.

For example, receptionist, account manager, regional sales manager, sales engineer, marketing associate, and software developer are all roles within an organization. The Sales organizational unit might consist of roles such as account manager, sales engineer, and regional sales manager. An individual might perform the roles of sales engineer and programmer. You might also have an individual who reports to the Programming department, but does some work as a sales engineer.

A role contains competencies and teams as part of its definition. For example, the role of programmer might require the competency of certified Java programming skills. Competencies are assigned to a Role definition through a System Architect matrix editor (see below).

You can assign teams to a role definition. For example, you might have a web team that consists of a group of workers that updates the corporate website. This team performs the role of updating the corporate website. It might include workers from different departments or different work titles. Teams are assigned to a Role definition through a System Architect matrix editor (see below).