Perspective¶

A perspective describes the context of an actor and how they are likely to process the information that is presented to them. It is built from their skills, their background and the situation they are working in at the time.

Two people can be shown exactly the same data and reach different conclusions. A clinical researcher looking at a table of patient measurements reads it as evidence about a treatment; a data engineer looking at the same table reads it as a set of columns with a particular quality profile. Neither is wrong - they are viewing the data through different perspectives. Capturing the perspective alongside the actor allows the governance program to reason about who is capable of performing a particular role, who needs additional explanation when data is delivered to them, and which audiences a piece of documentation is written for.

Perspectives and skills¶

A perspective is attached to the actor's profile or role. Alongside it, the individual capabilities of the actor are described using skills. Related skills are grouped into a skill set, which is a specialized collection. An actor is linked to a skill set using the AssociatedSkills relationship.

This separation is deliberate:

• A skill is a discrete, transferable capability - for example, Python, pharmacovigilance or SQL tuning. Skills are reusable definitions that many actors can point to.
• A perspective is the combined viewpoint that emerges from an actor's skills, background and current context. It is the lens, rather than the individual pieces of glass.

Skills are also useful on their own. When work is assigned - such as a to do raised by a request for action - the skill sets of the candidate actors can be used to select someone able to complete it.

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