Business capability modeling (BCM) should be in the toolbelt of every enterprise architect (EA). When done properly, BCM helps practitioners uncover gaps in their enterprise and detail how and where attention need to be for corrective actions. Gaps commonly occur when a business strategy is not aligned to the daily activities of enterprise resources. Resulting in a mismatch of priorities and the work being completed. However, the pain flows in both directions. Leadership can cause misalignment when there is a lack of understanding of current capabilities. For instance, IT may not be able to support strategic decisions due to legacy systems capabilities. Communication is key here but having BCM artifacts that model current states can allow this problem to be avoided.
When creating BCM’s, leadership and stakeholders need to be transparent with one another and lean on the experience of the EA teams for capturing appropriate levels of detail and allowing views to be standardized for integration with the larger business architecture. A BCM is successful if it can drive insight on the cost of programs and projects to business capabilities, in order to highlight where investments in resources and attention are going. Allowing gaps to be clearly highlighted with actionable insights.
The diagram below is an example BCM of strategic priorities compared to current IT investment:
With this breakdown of spending and priorities, potential problems like why is “Procure Merchandise” receiving a high level of investment when it is no longer a priority in the strategy are identified. The annotation of strategic priority or Strategic Business Capability (SBC) is an imperative dimension to resolving that question and determining cause.
References:
- Weldon, L. & Burton, B. (2011) Use Business Capability Modeling to Illustrate Strategic Business Priorities. Gartner.
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