Content Comparison

Owning unit

The unit accountable for the governance, lifecycle, and quality of the domain entity (e.g. capability, information asset, or policy).

There should be only one owning unit per entity. Ownership includes strategic alignment, funding decisions, and compliance responsibility.

Providing unit

The unit that delivers the core functionality, service, or resource associated with the domain entity.

A unit may provide for multiple consuming units. May or may not be the same as the owning unit. Must coordinate service delivery or access management.

Consuming unit

The unit that actively uses the outputs or results of the domain entity to perform its own operations.

Typically refers to service consumption or data usage. Consumption should be traceable to specific processes or value streams within the consuming unit.

Utilising unit

A broader term than consuming, denoting any unit that benefits from the domain entity, even if indirectly (e.g. benefits from insight, capability).

Use when a unit depends on value derived from the entity but does not consume or operate it directly (e.g. using KPIs or policy effects).

Custodian unit

The unit responsible for maintaining integrity, accuracy, and compliance of an information or data entity.

Commonly applied to information, records, and policies. The custodian ensures the content remains authoritative, secure, and consistent with standards.

Dependent unit

The unit whose ability to achieve its objectives relies on the effective functioning of another unit’s domain entity.

Use to highlight indirect or downstream impacts, especially in strategic or compliance-sensitive environments.

Supported unit

The unit that gains operational advantage or risk reduction as a result of another unit’s domain activity, but is not actively consuming it.

Typically used where benefit is derived passively (e.g. safety improvement from another unit's policy implementation or data cleansing initiative).

Governing unit

The unit responsible for setting rules, standards, or oversight mechanisms for the domain entity and ensuring compliance across all related units.

Typically applies to policies, regulatory frameworks, or enterprise architecture standards. Governing units may audit, direct, or override other roles to ensure alignment.

Capability

Owning, utilising, supporting, consuming, dependent, custodian

Most commonly used; a central anchor for inter-unit coordination

Information

Providing, consuming, custodian, dependent

Typically shared across units with a clear lineage of stewardship

Service

Owning, providing, consuming

Represents operational service dependencies between units

Value stream

Shared, contributing, dependent

Highlights collaborative delivery of customer or internal value

Initiative

Supported by, accountable to

May be indirectly implied rather than structurally modelled as a relationship

Product

Supported, owned, developed by

Used sparingly in inter-unit context; product-level relationships tend to be value stream mediated

1

Very weak – minor or occasional interaction

2

Weak – intermittent or low-impact interaction

3

Moderate – regular involvement or mutual dependence

4

Strong – frequent and important interaction

5

Very strong – mission-critical, embedded, or highly interdependent