Working with Capabilities
Capabilities have been used for decades in organizations. But not with the impact we would like to see. What business capabilities are to some, and what business functions are to others? This means that capabilities still cause misunderstandings.
I present the Dragon1 approach to working with capabilities to get more success out of capabilities. This approach introduces new views of the enterprise for your business architecture. And with those new views, you can make better decisions on implementing new business concepts to increase your organizational capabilities.
The Dragon1 Approach
First, you should make a difference between ability, capability, and disability.
- 1) An ability (being able) is what you can do all by yourself.
- 2) A capability is what you potentially can do, often only with the help or support of other organizations, systems, or changes.
- 3) A disability is what you can't do.
Second, you need to define three new views in your business architecture: the current and future ability view, the current and future capability view, and the current and future disability view.
And third, you need to create lists and models of your abilities, capabilities, and disabilities.
An ability addresses actual and practical functions, services, skills, talents & levels of expertise.
A capability addresses potential functions, services, skills, talents, and levels of expertise, often needing services & products of others or needing organizational changes.
Example of Working with Capabilities
A fictional example of working with capabilities is:
EasyJet can transport people at a low cost on Earth. But EasyJet does not yet have the capability of flying people at a low cost to the moon and back.
If they would collaborate with Tesla, EasyJet would probably increase its capability to provide low-cost moon landings.
Benefits of the modern Dragon1 Approach
With this modern approach, you can much better inventory what you can do yourself currently and where you depend on abilities and capabilities with others. Also, the visualized make-or-buy and outsourcing decisions can be much better.
You may depend more on the products and services than you imagine. Also, it may turn out that you are more vulnerable as an organization than you would imagine. It is also a reason for creating these new business views and using them to make strategic business decisions.
The business disability view will show you that your current architecture cannot succeed. If you want to be able to do, for example, customer self-service, you need to change your business architecture. And you can do so by implementing the correct business concepts.
Want to create the new Business Architecture Views?
On Dragon1, you can create new views for business architecture. We even have different symbols for ability, capability, and disability you can use. For more information about business architecture and business capabilities, you can contact me via the contact page on this website.