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.

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 FastLane.

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).

In the navigation panel, click Business Architecture > Business Capabilities to open the explorer for business capabilities.​

Add a new root-level business capability. Click the root node of the explorer and click New button to open the edit panel.

Add a new subordinate business capability. Click the parent business capability in the explorer, go to the Overview tab and open the Sub-Domains view. Click New > Create New Business Capability to open the edit panel.

Change the parent of a business capability. In the Sub-Domains view, click New > Move Existing Business Capability Here to open a selector where you can chose the business capability to move to the new parent business capability.

Edit an existing business capability. Select the checkbox  DWB_Checkbox for the business capability you want to edit and click the Edit  dlt-icon-edit_Teal button to open the edit panel.

Define the business capability's basic data. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the business capability and save it.

  • Level ID: (Recommended) Enter a level ID for the business capability in the business capability hierarchy. Each business capability should be assigned a number in the Level ID attribute. The business capabilities will be displayed in alphabetical and numerical order. You can leave this attribute empty at first and assign the level ID to your business capabilities after they have been created.
  • Name: (Mandatory) The name of the business capability. The name should capture an abstract description of what is done to meet it the company's business objectives.
  • Business Relevance: (Recommended) Indicates how relevant the business capability is for the business.
    • Mission Critical: The business capability is crucial to the organization's business and therefore essential to the accomplishment of the vision, goals and objectives.
    • Business Evolving: The business capability responds to internal and external change and helps to support the necessary steps to transition the organization's business.
    • Business Enabling: The business capability is currently core to the business of the organization and describes what currently exists in the business.
    • Business Operating: The business capability is not unique to the business but does provide the support required to operate the business. Because it is not unique to the business, it does not constitute a core business capability.
  • Business Capability Status: (Recommended) Describes the status of the business capability in the company.
    • In Use: The business capability is part of the business portfolio and is enabled by active applications.
    • Suspended: The business capability has been suspended for a short period of time.
    • Terminated: The business capability has been terminated and remains part of the business architecture for archiving purposes.
    • Outsourced: The business capability has been outsourced to an external organization. The external organization provides business capability as services to the organization.
  • Description: Provide an explanation about the business capability.

Ideally your company has documented its application. Applications should already be in the repository in order to define the application that supports the business capability. Some business questions in Alfabet FastLane 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 and application. The relationship between the application and business capability is called an operational business support.

  1. In the navigation panel, click Business Architecture > Business Capabilities to open the data workbench for business capabilities.​
  2. Click the navigate Navigate button of the business capability to open the content area. Go to the Application Portfolio page. In the Application Architecture box, add applications in the Applications Providing Business Capabilities field.

An evaluation is a measurement of the performance of an asset. Preconfigured indicator types and possibly custom indicator types added by your company are available to evaluate and are used in various analyses in Alfabet FastLane. Indicator types that are colored orange can be automatically computed by the system. All other indicator types must be manually defined.

In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the asset you want to define. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Evaluations view and open it.

Define the asset's indicators.

Select an indicator type and click Edit Indicator or click Group Edit to open a dialog where all indicator types can be edited that are not automatically computed by the system.

Update computed indicators. Click the Calculate button to update computed indicators via the Calculate button. The indicators will be recalculated based on the current. Please note that computed indicators that are calculated based on the current data.

In Alfabet FastLane, responsibilities are documented via the concept of roles, whereby each role is based on a preconfigured role type or a custom role type defined by your company. In contrast to an authorized user who has read/write permissions, a person assigned a role for an asset will not have read/write permissions based on the role definition. The role is primarily for documentation purposes to provide information about stakeholders interested or responsible for the asset. If the user should have read/write permissions, they must either be the authorized user of the asset or assigned to an authorized user group associated with the asset.

Alfabet FastLane provides out-of-the-box role types that enable you to understand who is responsible for your IT assets in your IT portfolio. Additional role types that are relevant for your company can also be added.

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?

To define the users and organizations that have a role for an asset, click the navigate Navigate button of the asset you want to define. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Responsibilities view and open it. Click in a column cell to open a selector to define a role for the asset. Depending on the role column, you may be able to select a person or an organization. Switch between Person or Organization in the selector.

A person can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

  • Architect: A person who is responsible for the governance of the asset.
  • Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
  • IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
  • Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

An organization can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

  • Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
  • IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
  • Operations: An IT organization responsible for the operations of the asset.
  • Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

A generic attribute enable you to capture custom information about an asset. Your portfolio administrator may have already created predefined custom attributes that the object class for the asset you are working with. If this is the case, the preconfigured generic attribute can be added to an asset.

For example, the generic attribute Rationalization Status could be configured to capture whether an application is in the scope of rationalization activities. Thus it would be assigned to the class Application with a default value set to False. As an authorized user of an application, you can add this attribute to your application and change the value if you want to.

To specify a generic attribute for an asset, navigate to the data workbench where the asset is defined. In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the asset you want to define. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Generic Attributes view.

Add a preconfigured generic attribute to the asset. Click New > Add Generic Attributes from Class Configuration. Change the default value in the Value field as needed. The values that may be specified will depend on the type of property defined in the Type field.

Create a new generic attribute for the asset. Click New > Create New Generic Attribute. Define the following fields and click OK:

  • Name: Enter a name that is easy for other users to understand.
  • Type: Select the type of property that the generic attribute is. The field will display standard property types and enumerations. If you select an enumeration, the enumeration values will be displayed in the Value field.
  • Value: Specify the attribute value for the selected object class. The values that may be specified will depend on the type of property defined in the Type field. Other users might copy this attribute. The value you define will be the default value but they will be able to change it for their asset.

Copy an existing generic attribute from an asset based on the same object class. Click New > Copy Existing Generic Attributes. In the selector, select the assets that have the generic attributes you want to copy to your asset and click OK. You can change the value as needed.

You can attach documents to objects in Alfabet FastLane in the Attachments view available in object profiles.

To define a generic attribute for an asset, navigate to the data workbench where the asset is defined. In the data table, click the navigate Navigate button of the asset you want to define. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Attachments view and open it.

Upload a document to the asset. Click New > Add Document. Select the file from your local drive and click Upload. The document is displayed in the data table.

  • Note that when you upload a document, you must ensure that the document is not encrypted. Encryption might be caused by Microsoft™ Information Protection. Only documents with the sensitivity label "Public" can be uploaded. Other reasons for encryption might also apply due to your company's security policies.
  • The following file types are allowed: .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, .pdf, .zip, .png, .jpg, and .json The following file types are not allowed: .exe, .bat, .cmd, .ps1, .txt, .xml, .wsdl, .html, .svg

Add a URL to the asset. You can define a URL for the selected object. The user must have access permissions to the document and have access to the network path specified in the link and, typically, be in the same network domain.

  • Title: Enter a meaningful title for the URL link to help users understand why you included this URL with the selected object.
  • URL: Enter a valid URL starting with the prefix https://www. or http://www. The URL link may contain up to 511 characters. The user’s Windows® environment must be able to identify the document extension and identify the correct application to open the document. A validation will be executed to ensure that a new URL is well-formatted and does not contain a period <.> without a leading or trailing blank space.

The following browsers support opening the files via the Web link definition in Alfabet FastLane: Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 11.0 and Microsoft® Edge® in conjunction with Windows® 10. Mozilla® Firefox® 24.0 or higher including Mozilla® Firefox® Quantum are also supported but require additional configuration in the browser settings.