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Describing the Enterprise Capabilty for Creating value

Describing the Architecture of Business Capabilities

Building the business capability map

A business capability map describes what the enterprise is capable of producing for its internal needs or for meeting the needs of its clients.

A business capability map is a set of business capabilities with their dependencies which define a framework for an enterprise stage.

A business capability represents a specific ability that an organization possesses or needs to develop to deliver a particular business outcome.

The business capability map thus presents the business capabilities of the highest level for one of the transformation stages.

For more details on business capability map diagrams, see Creating a capability structure diagram.

Describing the business capability breakdown

Business capabilities are then described more precisely to identify:

• a more detailed granularity capability breakdown;

• the expected effects of the capability;

• the business skills or functionalities required for each of them;

• the dependencies between capabilities (expected effect of one dependent from the result of the other).

For example, the business capability that consists of managing operations is broken down into a number of business capabilities: “Handle customer complaints”, “Manage reservations”.

Defining the business skills and functionalities associated with business capabilities

To be able to then check that each business capability is correctly implemented by suitable solution building block, you must define the required business skills and functionalities.

A technology capability is the ability to deliver a technology service which is required by a technology artifact or an application.

For more details on skills and the business capability functionalities, see Defining business skills and functionalities associated with capabilities.

Describing value streams

A value stream is represented by a sequencing of value creation steps managed by the business functions of the architecture.

A value stream is an end-to-end collection of Value Stages that creates an outcome for a customer, who may be the ultimate customer or an internal end-user of the value stream.

A value stage is a distinct, identifiable phase or step within a value stream that has a unique entrance criteria, exit criteria, and identifiable participating business function or business functional area.

The following diagram presents an example of a value stream:

For more details on value streams, see Describing Value Streams.

Describing business capability implementation by the business functions

This involves connecting the business capability, which corresponds to what we know how to do or what we want to do and which represents the goal to be achieved, to a way of achieving what is represented by a business function or a business functional area at a conceptual level, that is, upstream of organizational and technical choices.

A Business functional area is a set of business functions and their associated value streams on the conjunction of two main criteria: their need in accomplishing one or more business capabilities and the common skills and functionalities required to accomplish these business capabilities.

This business functional area will itself carry the value processes whose steps will require its business function components.

Construction of the business capability map on the one hand and the business architecture environment on the other hand is used to check that the business capabilities are implemented by the business functions.

For more details on the businesses associated with business capabilities, see Creating Fulfillment of a Business Capability.

Hopex IT Business Management provides a report that presents the result of the implementation of business capabilities by business functions.

For more details on the breakdown of business capabilities, see Creating Fulfillment of a Business Capability.

Identifying Exhibited Business Capabilities

An exhibited business capability is exhibited by an Enterprise Stage with quantified measure (KPI) and potential geopolitical scope (Site) for a defined market segment (Business Partner).

From a transformation stage, it is possible to create exhibited business capabilities that can connect the transformation strategic elements to the technical or organizational elements that assure their implementation.

For more details on exhibited business capabilities creation, see Managing Exhibited Business Capabilities.

The exhibited business capabilities are assessed with respect to different criteria or measurable properties.

For example, the competitiveness of a delivery capability is measured according to the ‘delivery time at target cost' measurable property.

These measurable properties give rise, for a given transformation stage, to key performance indicators.

For example, a delivery capability can have a target of 'delivery time in less than 48 hours for a cost price less than 10% of the sales price' within the framework of a given transformation stage.

A set of constraint values defines the grouping of elementary Qualifying values that should be examined together in order to appreciate the actual performance of a KPIed item. E.g.: a delivery must take place in less than 20 minutes and cost less than 5 euros.

For more details, see Using performance indicators.