A business capability is defined as ‘a particular ability or capacity that a business may possess or exchange to achieve a specific purpose or outcome. Capabilities represent the basic building blocks, or DNA, of a business’. Capabilities define what, not how, a business does something’ [BIZBOK®].
Examples of Level 1 business capabilities are: sales, risk & compliance, payments
Why is it important to model business capabilities?
- Capabilities clarify terms and concepts across organizational borders.
- Capabilities provide a robust skeleton, a framework for assigning all the other elements of the enterprise architecture.
- Capabilities can be used as the central structure for heat mapping in order to answer questions such as: ‘Which strategic fields of actions do we see in which capability’; ‘In which capabilities are we planning to invest how much?‘; ‘Which capabilities are not supported enough by IT?’
- Assigning IT-applications to capabilities is a powerful way to support business & IT alignment.