Velocize maintains roles as durable product meaning. A role defines its purpose, context, inputs, outputs, authority, responsibilities, constraints and escalation path. Assignment connects that contract to an actor within a governed scope. People and AI can participate in the same lifecycle with distinct authority, while the human accountable owner remains identifiable for each workflow execution.
What is a role contract?
A role describes a responsibility that can survive changes of person, team or model. The architecture owner governs architecture decisions; the implementation role produces bounded changes; the validation role examines evidence. Each role makes the expected output and permitted consequence explicit.
The contract remains understandable alongside its workflow stage and execution profile. A specialized legal, security, release or data role refines the relevant responsibility class. Specialization narrows the inherited boundary instead of silently widening authority.
Why separate roles from identity groups?
Directory groups, federation claims and provisioning records can contribute assignment signals. They do not define what approving a release or accepting a supplier response means. Velocize retains the canonical role meaning and makes the effective assignment reviewable in its actual scope.
An actor may hold several roles where policy allows. A role held in one project or workflow does not imply the same authority elsewhere. Applicable profiles retain companion roles and separation requirements, so convenience does not erase the distinction between doing, reviewing and approving work.
How do assignments enter and leave a scope?
Direct assignment, delegated assignment, workflow assignment and profile resolution provide governed entry paths. Revocation, expiry, handoff, profile changes and scope changes provide removal paths. The history shows which actor obtained or lost the binding and why it applied to the work.
Naming someone in a plan does not grant that person a role. A handover needs an authorized assignment path and the appropriate removal of the previous binding. The receiving actor can inspect the expected inputs, unresolved obligations and escalation route before continuing.
Who reviews, approves and remains accountable?
Review records what was examined and its disposition; approval records the governed decision after the required review. The approval role is human-only. Where the profile separates duties, the author cannot approve their own work. Protected irreversible decisions require a distinct second accountable confirmation within the same governed scope.
Each governed workflow execution has exactly one human accountable owner. This is an attribute of the execution binding, not a standing role that grants authority across a tenant. Delegating work to AI does not transfer that accountability.
How can AI assist or execute without expanding its authority?
Advisory, assisted execution, delegated execution, review, orchestration and monitoring have different outputs and authority. Assisted execution stays under continuing human direction. Delegated execution requires explicit, recorded, time-bounded and revocable delegation and is confined to the permitted execution stage.
AI cannot infer permission from an ambiguous request or use delegation to bypass a protected decision. When context is insufficient or contradictory, it stops at the governed boundary, explains the uncertainty and presents alternatives through the allowed jury or human escalation path.
Questions, answered
Does a model or directory group decide a role's authority?
Role meaning belongs to Velocize governance. Identity sources contribute signals; the effective scope, workflow stage, execution profile and assignment determine the permitted participation.
Can AI become the accountable owner?
No. Every governed workflow execution has one human accountable owner. AI may perform explicitly delegated bounded work, while accountability stays with that human.