Process Owner

The individual who holds primary authority and accountability for the ongoing performance, documentation, and improvement of a specific operational process, regardless of whether they personally execute that process. 

The process owner is accountable when the process produces the wrong output, when the documentation is outdated, and when changes to the process go uncommunicated to affected stakeholders.

The absence of named process owners is the single most common cause of cross-functional operational breakdown at the $30M–$100M company stage.