Inter-unit domain relationship

Introduction

Inter-unit domain relationships describe how business architecture elements—such as capabilities, services, policies, or performance indicators—are shared, co-managed, or interdependent across different organisational units. These relationships provide a more accurate picture of how the organisation functions in practice, especially where responsibilities cross formal boundaries.

Purpose

Establishing inter-unit relationships helps your organisation to:

• Clarify shared ownership, dependencies, or oversight across business units.

• Support cross-functional planning, delivery, and performance tracking.

• Reveal how outcomes are achieved through coordinated effort across teams.

• Enable more holistic reporting, especially for enterprise-wide strategies and capabilities.

Automatically identified relationships

In most cases, the Orthogramic app will automatically identify inter-unit relationships by analysing the content of uploaded documents. If domain elements such as services, policies, or initiatives are described in the context of multiple organisational units, relationships are inferred and created accordingly.

These automated relationships:

• Are based on document evidence and context.

• Are visible in dashboards and views across domain and unit perspectives.

• Can be reviewed, confirmed, or adjusted by authorised users.

Manually defined relationships

In addition to automatic detection, users can manually define inter-unit relationships to reflect practical arrangements or planning considerations not yet captured in documents.

To manually define a relationship:

1. Open the relevant domain element (e.g. a specific service, stakeholder, or KPI).

2. Select Link to another unit.

3. Choose the unit and specify the nature of the relationship (e.g. lead, support, oversight).

4. Save the entry to register the relationship.

Manual relationships can be particularly useful when:

• Formal responsibilities are still being documented.

• Temporary or informal collaborations exist.

• You are preparing for structural changes or new initiatives.

Good practice in managing relationships

• Focus on relationships that are active or strategically important.

• Review regularly to ensure accuracy and relevance.

• Use clear relationship types to convey the nature of interdependence.

• Use dashboards and filters to monitor the impact of shared responsibilities.

Example

Here is an that illustrating inter-unit domain relationships, showing how elements from different business architecture domains (e.g. Capability, Service, Initiative) span organisational units:

Description

• Business Unit A owns a Capability (Customer Analytics)

• Business Unit B provides a Service (CRM Platform) and delivers an Initiative (CRM Upgrade)

• Business Unit C governs with a Policy (Data Governance)

• The arrows show inter-unit domain relationships, crossing boundaries between organisational units and domains:

  • utilizing (Capability → Service)

  • supporting (Capability → Initiative)

  • governing (Policy -> Capability)

Viewing Inter-unit domain relationships

• Click a node

• In the Node menu (See below), select > Relationships

• Select > Inter-unit domain relationships

• The Inter-unit domain relationships will be displayed as shown below. In this example, a capability in one organization unit has a variety of relationships with domain entities in other organization units.

Relationship details

When the inter-unit relationships are displayed:

1. Click a relationship

2. Click the other entity you are in interested in

3. The info panel will open and display a card with the relationship information

Relationship Types

Node	Role type	Definition
	owning	The unit accountable for the governance, lifecycle, and quality of the domain entity (e.g. capability, information asset, or policy).
	providing	The unit that delivers the core functionality, service, or resource associated with the domain entity.
	consuming	The unit that actively uses the outputs or results of the domain entity to perform its own operations.
	utilizing	A broader term than consuming, denoting any unit that benefits from the domain entity, even if indirectly (e.g. benefits from insight, capability).
	custodian	The unit responsible for maintaining integrity, accuracy, and compliance of an information or data entity.
	dependent	The unit whose ability to achieve its objectives relies on the effective functioning of another unit’s domain entity.
	supported	The unit that gains operational advantage or risk reduction as a result of another unit’s domain activity, but is not actively consuming it.
	governing	The unit responsible for setting rules, standards, or oversight mechanisms for the domain entity and ensuring compliance across all related units.

Relationship strength

To enhance the usefulness of inter-unit domain relationships in organisational analysis, a numeric relationship strength value may be added. This value provides a relative indication of the intensity, criticality, or frequency of interaction between an organisational unit and the domain entity.

Relationship strength is visually represented by the width of the connection between the nodes.

In the image above, the first relationship has a strength of 5 and the second a strength of 1.

Related pages

• Cross Domain Relationships