Use Business Capability Maps as the key to the hidden Treasures of Digital Transformation
Today, every company in the world is looking for ways to transform in the direction of more digital capabilities. Many companies of the old economy look up to companies of the new economy like Amazon or Google and perceive them as role models if not as archetypes. Most of these companies want to become 'a bit like Amazon' but forget about one key thing: their existing business capabilities that represent the strengths that made them successful in the past. They do not model their current and strategic future capabilities systematically. They do not use the key to open the treasure chest of digital transformation.
The basic idea of capability modeling is simple: structure the business of a company hierarchically by capabilities it needs to create customer value.
Why is it important to model business capabilities?
- Capabilities clarify terms and concepts across organizational borders.
- Capabilities provide a robust skeleton, a framework for assigning all the other elements of the enterprise architecture.
- Capabilities can be used as the central structure for heat mapping in order to answer questions such as: ‘Which strategic fields of actions do we see in which capability’; ‘In which capabilities are we planning to invest how much?‘; ‘Which capabilities are not supported enough by IT?’
- Assigning IT-applications to capabilities is a powerful way to support business & IT alignment.
What you should do:
1.) Create a simple high-level capability map and heat map it according to your strengths and weaknesses. The 'how to model capabilities' section of the Architectural Thinking Framework provides design guidance.
2.) During strategic planning: define capabilities where you want to invest (i.e. innovate or optimize)
3.) Focus your investments according to these strategic decisions
Director and Principal Tutor, Avancier Limited
6 年For 10 years I have been asking people to show me a Business Capability Map (c2010) that looks any different to a Business Function Hierarchy (c1990). Nobody has done so. They are drawn for the same reaons and used for the same purposes. The reason is that every unique Business Function (aggregate of activities) requires a unique Business Capability (unique aggreate of abilities). The two concepts are naturally aligned in a 1 to 1 corrspondence. This paper?https://bit.ly/2Kpa80F explores Functions and Capabilities in TOGAF 9.2.
Digital Officer at GSK
6 年Isabelle Lambert, Miguel F.
Director and Principal Tutor, Avancier Limited
6 年FYI, the use of function hierarchies and/or capability hierarchies in discused in relation to BOST, BizBOK, TOGAF 8, TOGAF 9.1 and 9.2 in this research paper on the business architect role.
Capability = the ability to do something It is an attribute of the entity, not the entity itself.? Too often, capability is treated as the entity rather than an attribute of the entity.? This is the most common reason for poor quality capability models.? Being an attribute of an entity that "does" things, it is possible to consider the entity as a system. With this in mind, organisations can now ask what systems do we need to put our operating model into effect?? How well do these (business) systems support our operating model?? Where are the most critical gaps requiring strengthening and improving for enhanced organisational performance?
Director and Principal Tutor, Avancier Limited
6 年THIRD: Conclusion: different kinds of capability may be related to different, or all, entities in an EA meta model. And the more you strip a capability of the physical resources it needs, the closer it gets to a logical process or function. A concrete capability is defined in terms of people, processes, data and technologies. It is a physical business system to be constructed and delivered. By contrast an abstract capability is defined independent of people, processes, data and technologies. It usually if not always corresponds to a logical business function in a functional decomposition hierarchy.