Capture business capability data

Some enterprises define their business by means of business capabilities that describe the main functions and competencies about what is necessary to run the business. A business capability is captured as an abstract description of what is done in a company to meet its business objectives independent of the organization's structure, business processes, and people. This approach helps companies to understand which core capabilities of the business need to be supported and which parts of the IT architecture contribute to these core capabilities and are therefore most important for business success.

In contrast, a business process details the set of activities that represent the work required to achieve a business objective. This would include processes such as selling products, delivering services, distributing products, invoicing for services, and accounting for money received. For example, Support and Services is a high-level abstract description of a business capability whereas Deliver Services is a description of a repeatable activity (business process) that takes place.

You company's main business capabilities should be defined as the highest level business capabilities. It is recommended that this is limited to 5-10 generic business capabilities. Each business capability may have multiple subordinate business capabilities, whereby it is recommended that the business capability model not have more than 3 or 4 levels to provide manageability.

Users with the user profiles Portfolio Manager and Portfolio Admin can add and edit business capabilities in Alfabet. Click for an overview of permission concepts.

Business capabilities are structured in a business capability hierarchy. Before you begin, you should consider which business capabilities are your main business capabilities and which are their subordinate business capabilities. It is recommended that you conceptualize your business capabilities in a hierarchy with at least two levels. The top two levels of business capabilities are analyzed in the context of various business questions in Alfabet.

Start with the main business capabilities in your company and assign each of these business capabilities a number such as 1, 2, and so on. Next consider the subordinate business capabilities below each top-level business capability and assign a logical numerical system: 1.1, 1.2., 1.3, etc. For example, Market Development, Product Development, and Support and Services would be typical high level business capabilities with Level ID attributes set to 1, 2, and 3 respectively. The business capability Product Development ( Level ID = 2) might have the subordinate business capabilities Product Capability Definition ( Level ID = 2.1), Product Development Planning ( Level ID = 2.2), and Product Design ( Level ID = 2.3).

Go to Business Architecture > Business Capabilities data workbench and click New > Business Capability.

Try to capture as much information as possible about the business capability because complete data considerably improves the results of business questions and other analytics.

Once a business capability is in the repository, you can define more details about it in the Business Capabilities data workbench . Or specify and analyze the business capability in detail in its content area . In the data workbench, click the Navigate button for a business capability to open its content area > Overview page. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the business capability and save it.

Per default, the data workbench displays a limited set of basic attributes. You can add more columns via the Structure column to capture other attributes directly in the data workbench.

Assigning users and organizations to roles is critical to understanding responsibility for assets in the IT and is required to answer the business question Who is responsible for our assets?.

Responsibilities are based on preconfigured role types. Your company may also configure custom role types via the Portfolio Admin user profile. Depending on the role type, a specified user and/or a specified organization may fulfill the responsibility for the business capability. A user assigned responsibility via a role has read-only permissions to the business capability. To change data about the business capability, they must also be specified as an authorized user or member of a n authorized user group.

Roles can be assigned to a business capability in the Business Capabilities data workbench or the business capability content area via Overview > Responsibilities.

Each role column represents the responsibility that a user or organization has for the business capability. A person or organization can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

  1. Click a column cell to open a selector to define the role for the business capability. Depending on the role column, the selector may have a section for both Person and Organization.
  2. Expand the relevant section and select the person or organization to assign their role to the business capability.

Applications should already be in the repository in order to define the application that supports the business capability. Some business questions in Alfabet can only be answered if the relationships between applications and business capabilities are defined.

Applications support the company to realize its business capabilities. For each business capability, you should specify the applications that support the business capability in order to understand how the business may be at risk due to IT failure.

When you specify a business capability that the application supports, a reference is automatically created between the business capability, the application that provides it, and the organization that uses the application. The relationship between the application, business capability, and organization is call an operational business support.

  1. In the Business Capabilities data workbench, click the Navigate  Navigate button to open the business capability's content area.
  2. Go to the Application Context page.
  3. In the Providing Applications field, enter the names of the applications that provide the business capability, or click in the field to open the selector. Select each application that you want to assign to the business capability.
  4. Click outside of the selector to close it and update the Providing Applications field.

The TIME (Tolerate, Invest, Migration, Eliminate) matrix compares the business and technical scores of an application to the recommendation specified for the application. Review the business and technical scores of applications when making decisions about whether it is best to keep an application, invest in the application, consider the application as a migration candidate, or sundown the application. Compare the recommendations that were made for each application with the real-world business and technical scores and consider which applications may qualify as candidates to invest or retire in order to meet rationalization goals. Applications that do not have the required business and technical scores are not evaluated.

Go to the business capability content area > TIME Portfolio Analysis:

  • The Y-axis represents the weighted score based on an application's Technical Score indicators.
  • The X-axis represents the weighted score based on an application's Business Score indicators.
  • Applications are visualized as bubbles and placed in one of four quadrants based on the computation of the business and technical scores:
    • Tolerate: Keep application
    • Invest: Invest in application
    • Migrate: Consider application as a migration candidate
    • Eliminate: Sundown application
  • The bubble size indicates the application cost based on the current year operational expenditure (OpEx). The larger the bubble, the more expensive is the application.
  • The bubble color indicates the correspondence of the business and technical scores with the strategic recommendation specified via the application's Recommendation attribute.
    • Green bubbles indicate that the business/technical scores correspond to the strategic recommendation specified for the application.
    • Red bubbles indicate that the strategic recommendation is not aligned with the business/technical scores of the application.
    • Grey bubbles indicate the the Recommendation attribute is not defined for the application.
  • Point to an application to show a tooltip with the following information: Application name, business score ( BS ), technical score ( TS ), Recommendation value, current year operational expenditure ( OpEx).

Application Recommendation: Shows applications based on the definition of the Recommendation attribute. Point to a doughnut slice to display a tooltip with the number of applications with that recommendation. Double-click a doughnut slice to open a data workbench showing all applications with the recommendation. You can edit an application's Recommendation attribute directly in the data workbench.

The following business questions are relevant for the analysis of business capabilities: