Catalogue › Organisation Tailoring › ai-role-catalogue

AI role catalogue

Maintains the catalogue of AI transformation roles - department lead roles plus sponsor, business, knowledge, solution and reviewer roles - each with purpose, responsibilities, decisions, capabilities, separation rules and typical time, and maps them to the job roles the organisation has declared. Use when an operating model names roles nobody recognises, when job titles must be matched to AI roles, or when the catalogue needs updating.

Department

Organisation Tailoring

Lifecycle

Mobilise, Enable, Scale

Maturity

explorer, adopter, builder, scaler, ai-enterprise

Risk tiers

0, 1, 2, 3, 4

Platforms

platform-neutral

Editions

starter, scale, enterprise

Reviewers

none

Status

draft

Copilot Cowork

Organisation Tailoring plugin for Copilot Cowork, or this skill on its own: Download SKILL.md

Licence

CC BY 4.0, by Simon Foote

Purpose

Operating models, RACIs and ownership maps all refer to roles such as "Agent Product Owner", "Knowledge Owner" or "Responsible AI Reviewer", and organisations rarely have job titles that match. This skill maintains one catalogue of AI transformation roles, each defined by purpose, responsibilities, decisions it holds, capabilities it needs, separation rules and typical time by edition, and maps those roles to the job roles the organisation has declared. It is the shared vocabulary that lets every other artefact name the same role the same way. Role catalogues go wrong when they become job descriptions, when roles are defined by technology rather than responsibility, and when the mapping is used to judge the people who hold the jobs.

When to use

• An operating model, RACI or pack names roles that people in the organisation do not recognise.
• Job titles need to be matched to the AI roles the programme relies on, before owners are named.
• Several documents describe the same role differently and need a single definition.
• The organisation is adding roles as it scales (spoke leads, specialist reviewers, AI engineers) and the catalogue needs updating.
• HR or a line manager asks what an AI role involves and how much time it takes.

When not to use

• Assigning an accountable role to each department and pack artefact - use organisation-tailoring:ownership-map.
• Designing the CoE core team and its supporting roles - use ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-team-design.
• Activity-level responsibilities for CoE work - use ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-raci.
• Analysing what AI skills each role needs to learn - use learning-and-skills:ai-skills-needs-analysis.
• Deciding the operating model shape the roles sit in - use ai-strategy:ai-operating-model.

Questions to ask first

1. Which job roles and titles has the organisation declared for AI work, and which are filled, vacant or covered part-time?
2. Which edition and operating model shape apply, since they decide which roles are combined or separate?
3. Which roles must stay independent of each other (builder and approver, solution owner and reviewer)?
4. Does HR need role profiles for recruitment or job design, or only a working catalogue for the programme?
5. Who will own the catalogue and approve changes to it?

Required inputs

• The department catalogue with each department's lead role, which supplies the backbone of the role list.
• The tailored operating model from organisation-tailoring:operating-model-tailoring or ai-strategy:ai-operating-model.
• The organisation's declared job roles and titles, from the profile or the sponsor.
• Separation requirements by risk tier from opportunity-management:risk-classification and the governance framework.

If the organisation has not declared a job role for a catalogue role, the mapping reads "not yet mapped" and the gap goes to the ownership map. Never infer a mapping from a person's name, seniority or apparent interest.

Decision framework

Organise the catalogue in role families. Each role entry has the same fields.

Mapping rules: one catalogue role may map to several job roles (spoke leads), and one job role may hold several catalogue roles, provided no separation rule is broken.

Practitioner approach

Build the catalogue from responsibilities, not titles. Start with the lead roles in the department catalogue, then add the roles every AI programme relies on that are not department leads: executive sponsor, accountable executive, business owner, knowledge owner, solution owner, maker, Champion. Write each one's purpose in a single sentence. If you cannot, the role is either two roles or not a role.

Fill the fields for each role. Write responsibilities as actions ("keeps grounding content current and reviews it on a set cycle"), decisions as rights ("approves which content an agent may ground on"), and capabilities as things that can be shown ("can explain how permissions affect what Copilot returns"). Avoid naming products in the role definition; product names change faster than responsibilities.

Write separation rules carefully, because they are the part of the catalogue that protects people and the organisation. The maker of a tier 2 or higher solution is not its release approver; reviewers are independent of solution owners; the accountable executive for a tier 3 or 4 use is not the person who built it. Everything else can be combined when the organisation is small.

Give typical time by edition as ranges and mark them as starting points to confirm. A Champions Programme Owner at Starter may be a few hours a month; at Enterprise it may be a substantial part of a role. Never present these as standards; they are prompts for an honest conversation about capacity.

Map to the organisation's declared job roles with the sponsor or HR. Take each catalogue role and ask which declared role holds it today, or should. Record the mapping, the combinations and any separation conflicts. Leave unmapped roles visible; they become vacancies in organisation-tailoring:ownership-map. Do not map by reputation or by who seems keen, and never use the catalogue to compare the people in mapped roles.

Keep the catalogue as a living reference. Add roles when the operating model grows (spoke leads, specialist reviewers, AI engineers), retire roles that are no longer needed, and record each change with its reason and approver. Every other artefact that names a role should use the catalogue's name, so a change here is a change everywhere.

Outputs

• An AI role catalogue: each role with family, purpose, responsibilities, decisions held, capabilities, separation rules and typical time by edition, consistent with the role catalogue section of the ai-operating-model template.
• A role mapping table: catalogue role, the organisation's declared job role or roles, combinations, separation check and status (mapped, not yet mapped, conflict).
• A change log for the catalogue with reasons and approvers.

Microsoft platform considerations

Platform roles (tenant administration, Power Platform and Copilot Studio administration, security and compliance tooling, Azure for Foundry solutions) are defined by responsibility; the admin roles that grant permissions in Microsoft products are configured separately and checked against references/sources.md. Do not equate a catalogue role with a product admin role.

Adoption considerations

Champions are contributors, not owners: define the Champion role with clear boundaries so it does not drift into an unpaid help desk. Make sure adoption roles sit on the business side as well as in IT.

Knowledge considerations

Knowledge owner is the role most often missing from AI catalogues. Define it explicitly, with the decision right over what an agent may ground on and the duty to keep content current.

Security and privacy considerations

The catalogue holds role definitions and organisational job titles, not personal data. If the mapping includes aliases for role holders, store it in the organisation's own location with restricted access.

Responsible AI considerations

Define the accountable executive and Responsible AI Reviewer roles even at Starter, so tier 3 and 4 uses have somewhere to go. Never use role mappings to assess, rank or profile the individuals who hold them.

Evaluation requirements

Not applicable, because the catalogue is an organisational reference rather than an AI solution; it is tested by checking that every role named in the pack exists in the catalogue and no mapping breaks a separation rule.

Value measures

Track the share of catalogue roles mapped to a declared job role, separation conflicts open, and artefacts using catalogue role names consistently, reported by the Transformation Architect at organisation level. Never measure the people in the roles.

Scale notes

Starter

A short catalogue of ten to fifteen roles, most held by two or three job roles, with the separation rules stated and the partner's roles included.

Scale

A full catalogue across all families, mapped to declared job roles with HR, used by every artefact in the pack.

Enterprise

A catalogue owned centrally with spoke variants per business unit, mapped to the organisation's job architecture, and changed through a recorded approval route.

Hand-offs

• To organisation-tailoring:ownership-map for unmapped roles and the appointments to make.
• To ai-centre-of-excellence:coe-raci so activity responsibilities use catalogue roles.
• To learning-and-skills:ai-skills-needs-analysis for the skills each role needs.
• To organisation-tailoring:capability-gap-analysis where mapped roles lack capability or time.

Reviewer gates

Not applicable, because the catalogue releases no solution; it must define reviewer roles for security-privacy, responsible-ai, evaluation-quality and design-authority as independent of builder and solution owner roles.

Failure modes

• Roles are defined by tools ("the Copilot Studio person") and become obsolete when products change.
• The catalogue turns into job descriptions and stalls in HR review.
• Separation rules are dropped to make the mapping fit a small team.
• The mapping is used to judge the people in mapped roles, and the organisation stops sharing honest information.

Sources

references/sources.md in this skill lists the source records behind this skill, what each is authoritative for, how volatile it is and what you may do with it. Product availability, licensing, limits and preview status change often, so check the current source before stating them, and cite what you used.

Never

• Map a role to a named individual the organisation has not declared.
• Rank, score or compare the people who hold mapped roles.
• Combine roles in a way that breaks a separation rule.
• Present typical time ranges as fixed standards.