Exploring business roles
A business role defines the responsibilities, rights, and duties that a business actor holds when performing specific business behavior.
A business role represents a set of responsibilities, rather than the person or team that fulfills them. A business role encompasses the rights and duties associated with performing specific business behavior, independently of who currently holds the role.
Business roles can have a parent role, letting you build a role hierarchy that reflects your organization's reporting structure. For example, a Credit Officer role can have Onboarding Specialist as its parent role.
Using the Enterprise Architecture Workspace, you can perform the following:
- Create and edit business roles
- Build a role hierarchy using parent roles
- Associate a department, group, and required skills with a business role
- Associate business actors with a business role to identify who fulfills it
When you model a business role in a diagram, the default relationship between a business actor and a business role is Assigned to :: Fulfilled by.
Parent Topic:Exploring the business architecture
Related topics
--- title: Exploring business roles description: A business role defines the responsibilities, rights, and duties that a business actor holds when performing specific business behavior. locale: en-US canonical_url: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/application-portfolio-management/eaw-business-roles.html release: brazil topic_type: concept last_updated: "2026-09-10" reading_time_minutes: 1 keywords: [business role, business actor, role hierarchy, Enterprise Architecture Workspace] breadcrumb: [Exploring the business architecture, Exploring Portfolio list view, Exploring Enterprise Architecture Workspace, Enterprise Architecture Workspace, Enterprise Architecture] --- # Exploring business roles A business role defines the responsibilities, rights, and duties that a business actor holds when performing specific business behavior. A business role represents a set of responsibilities, rather than the person or team that fulfills them. A business role encompasses the rights and duties associated with performing specific business behavior, independently of who currently holds the role. Business roles can have a parent role, letting you build a role hierarchy that reflects your organization's reporting structure. For example, a Credit Officer role can have Onboarding Specialist as its parent role. Using the Enterprise Architecture Workspace, you can perform the following: - Create and edit business roles - Build a role hierarchy using parent roles - Associate a department, group, and required skills with a business role - Associate business actors with a business role to identify who fulfills it When you model a business role in a diagram, the default relationship between a business actor and a business role is **Assigned to :: Fulfilled by**. **Parent Topic:**[Exploring the business architecture](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/brazil/markdown/application-portfolio-management/eaw-business-architecture.md) **Related topics** [Manage business roles](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ServiceNow/ServiceNowDocs/brazil/markdown/application-portfolio-management/eaw-manage-business-roles.md)
| title | Exploring business roles |
| description | A business role defines the responsibilities, rights, and duties that a business actor holds when performing specific business behavior. |
| locale | en-US |
| canonical_url | https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/application-portfolio-management/eaw-business-roles.html |
| release | brazil |
| topic_type | concept |
| last_updated | 2026-09-10 |
| reading_time_minutes | 1 |
| keywords | business rolebusiness actorrole hierarchyEnterprise Architecture Workspace |
| breadcrumb | Exploring the business architectureExploring Portfolio list viewExploring Enterprise Architecture WorkspaceEnterprise Architecture WorkspaceEnterprise Architecture |