Supporter and AI are sub-roles of Stakeholders!

[pedicurus]

As you mentioned,

1. Supporters is a specific Stakeholder type.
2. Non-human Stakeholders such as the law or AI should not be ignored.

Supporter and AI must be logically considered as the sub-roles of Stakeholders. But we have the following outline in the current SGEP:

• Stakeholder
• Supporter
• AI
• Product Developer
• Product Owner
• Scrum Master

It was supposed to be like this according to the definitions:

• Stakeholder
  • Supporter
  • AI
• Product Developer
• Product Owner
• Scrum Master

@ViralGoodAgile and @rjocham , I invite you to discuss about it.

[rjocham]

@pedicurus AI is omnipresent. It can be a stakeholder most likely a provider. However, it could also be a tool used by a Product Developer, agentic AI for the Scrum Team or even AI as an additional Product Developer. Again, AI can be applied pretty much everywhere. For that reason it is a first class role.

As an analogy, you could be a Product Owner and a Product Developer or Scrum Master and Product Developer you could be AI and a Product Developer. It is not a hierarchy, complexity is messy.

[pedicurus]

@rjocham — I don’t think my concern landed. I’m not debating where AI can show up. I’m pointing out a taxonomy mistake in the outline.

• In Scrum, accountabilities are: Product Owner, Scrum Master, Product Developer.
• Stakeholder is a separate category (outside the Scrum Team).
• AI is an actor type, not an accountability. It can be:
  • a Stakeholder (e.g., an AI provider), or
  • an actor holding a Scrum accountability (e.g., an agentic AI assigned as a Product Developer).

Calling “AI” a “first-class role” mixes levels (actor type ≠ accountability). Complexity doesn’t remove the need for a clean model; it makes it more important.

What I’m proposing is simply to fix the outline so types aren’t flattened:

• Stakeholder

  • Human
    • Supporter
    • (Here is an opportunity for other types of Human Sakeholders if necessary.)
  • Non-Human
    • AI
    • (Here is an opportunity for other types of Non-Human Sakeholders if necessary.)

• Scrum Team (Accountabilities)

  • Product Owner
  • Scrum Master
  • Product Developer

This keeps the model consistent while still allowing AI to participate wherever it’s assigned.

[ViralGoodAgile]

Hi @pedicurus. We used the words 'inanimate, non-human' in examples of Stakeholders. We are not writing a document for the future; as new stakeholders emerge, we can add them in future versions. Nevertheless, we'll review passages of text in light of your comments. Thank you for your time and thoughtfulness in guiding @rjocham and me to write better text.

[pedicurus]

@ViralGoodAgile My pleasure.