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).

You can add a new business capability from anywhere in the product via the orange New button in the header. Or 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

An evaluation is a measurement of the performance of an asset. The evaluation of applications is relevant for many business questions in Alfabet and is critical to have meaningful results in these analyses.

Evaluation types are preconfigured by Software GmbH. Each evaluation type bundles a set of indicator types that are assigned values. Your company may also configure custom evaluation types.

Any indicators that are colored orange are computed by the system and cannot be manually edited. The computed value is based on other indicators or attributes, therefore it is important to specify values for all of an asset's indicators. To display the indicators that are automatically calculated in the Evaluation view, click the three-dots button  ThreeDots > Show Computed Indicators.

To hide the orange rows so that you can focus on only the indicators that need to be manually specified, click the three-dots button ThreeDots > Hide Computed Indicators.

Define the asset's indicators. Click the navigate  Navigate button of the asset to open the content area. Go to the Overview page and scroll to the Evaluations view and open it. Click in the Value column for an indicator type and specify the value.

Update computed indicators. Click three-dots button  ThreeDots > Compute Indicators to update the indicators that are automatically calculated based on the values of other indicators and attributes. The computed indicators will be updated based on the current data.

Set all undefined values to the default value. The portfolio administrator who has configured the indicator types may specify default values for the indicators. You can update indicators that have no values defined with the predefined default values.

To enter the default values for all undefined indicator types, click Action > Set Undefined Values to Default. Please note that the updated values will not be reflected in the Last Update field.

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

To define document or URL 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 asset 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: 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.

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