There is a huge gap in insight as to what a digital business really is. Today when I hear business leders talk about going digital it’s mainly revolving around four scenarios.
The first scenario is to connect all the systems together though some sort of integration.
The second scenario is to reach the customer via apps over channels like smartphones, webb and make the experience omni.
The third scenario is to automate as much of the work as possible via some sort of BPM effort.
The fourth scenario is to put things in the cloud.
All four scenarios are valid efforts and should be taken into consideration as they will build a foundation for what needs to be. However this is not what defines a digital business.
Truly going digital means operating the business through a digital representation and this means that the models in the business repository has to (inter)face with reality.
The emerging situation
Principle #1: Don’t put anything in the repository to which you cannot attach a realtime data stream.
Why: All the things you have in the repository is a logical representation of something that is a real thing in a business perspective. Not collecting and displaying data from that real thing and associate that with the logical representation means that you really don’t have a clue about what is happening, what could happen and what will happen. To put it bluntly – you are just playing in the sandbox.
How: Attach the Customer, Financial, HR, Change and Production data streams to your repository, filter out the things that you need to display with the model element and put the rest on a query basis.
What: Use of complex event processing, analytics and decision support over the data in the repository means that early signs of change should be detected and action can be taken directly with a full insight into the consequence. Having this capability means that the business will become more efficient. On the inside you will have to redesign your workflows as they could now become automated by large and further the digitalization of the business.
Outcome: The business is agile, predictive and profitable in proportions never experienced before.
Don’t be scared, level zero in a capability map is just a way to structure the map so that we have a consistent way of communicating. It’s really not that important if all you wish todo is create an excellent set of capabilities for your business. However if you are intent on changing the foundation of your business then level zero is absolutely imperative to get right. Capabilities and capability maps are not organization structures, they do however serve as a powerful instrument when one need to create an organization architecture, in fact they are best thought of as organizing structures.
Are these patterns better than any other pattern one may ask and the answer is that they are not. There is probably more than a enough patterns to this problem of layout if you Google for capability maps. It’s just that I’ve used these patterns a lot and have seen others use them and have found them to be highly effective to influence the future of a business.
Remember that any business capability map can be reordered into any of these patterns, so do not let the choice of pattern for level zero stop you from investigating what is important.
It’s never been as important to reach outside of the business as it is in the digital world of today. From an architects perspective it is vital to be able to connect the dots between what is servicing and who is being served. This little card is designed to help you go fast by staying small and keeping it nimble. The design of the card does some heavy lifting by tying the outside to the inside through services and value requirements.
This Customer Card contains an example to make it easier for others to use the template card.
When you should use this
Whenever you need to understand the service and how you are servicing the customer
When you need to keep a trail from customer to service and deeper into the architecture
What you should consider when you use this
Use this is a guide, change it to fit your needs
Print many small copies and put in the hand of those who knows the customer
Print many large copies and put them on walls
This card is best used as a communication tool in collaboration between teams
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Most of the time people expect that a process is a linear execution of activities that has been predetermined, some people call this the happy path (top illustration) and expect that this is the way things should work. On other occasions people realize that processing is a bit more complex and adds in what they see as the alternative routes a process can take (middle illustration). These two views of processing is how almost all process architectures are expressed. In reality though processing from a business perspective is a jumble of alternative paths (bottom illustration) and it’s all but impossible to know before hand what the process would look like.
The illusions of process architecturesSisney (2012, l. 1406) writes that `adaptation to the environment is supreme and fitness or capability is always secondary´. This fits well with my view on the notion of dynamic processing and agile businesses.
Bloomberg (2013, p. 101) writes that `the end results are dynamic processes that have no predetermined flow. Instead, the people involved in the process begin with the goal for the process and then the technology supports the interactions among the people in order to achieve the goal´. This fits well with my assumption about processing as only dynamic activities that have no predetermined flow.
The traditional process view on a business solution architecture
This is the way most process views are expressed and it sucks. It sucks because it forces the business to become stale. It sucks because it forces the information systems into rigidity and complexity. After a couple of months or years people find new ways of working and there will be variations to the services offered. At that time it will become increasingly difficult to make changes in the systems and the business will suffer. The lead time from idea to realization will be longer and longer and complexity will increase until the system collapses under its own weight.
Traditional view on business solution architectureHowever it is not all bad with the traditional way of doing process architectures. Considering the fact that the same activities could be activated in the same order repeatedly we would leave tracks in our logs. Those tracks we could refer to as processes. By stitching those processes together we could use them as generic processing patterns, which would enhance our understanding of the overall behavior. From a systems execution standpoint tracks would enable us to reach higher performance, since we would not have to start from scratch all the time.
Agile processing view on a business solution architecture
Richards (2015) writes that `Claims processing is a very complicated process. Each state has different rules and regulations for what is and isn’t allowed in an insurance claim. For example, some states allow free windshield replacement if your windshield is damaged by a rock, whereas other states do not. This creates an almost infinite set of conditions for a standard claims process´. The complications on process variations that Mark bring to light in his book is one reason why going to a capability based microservice architecture is the right thing to do for many information systems.
The processing dimension depicted in the illustration below is to be considered as a generic processing pattern. If you where to interview a business expert this is how you like them to describe their work. Knowing this we could start asking the business expert for each activity what it really is they would like to achieve by performing that particular activity. The result from such an inquiry would be activity goals, these goals we could express in the architecture as activity events. If we did this transformation from activity goals to events we lay the foundation for freedom in processing and retain the ability to continue our conversation with the business experts.
Agile processing view on a business solution architectureThe illustration above is a good representation of how I would recommend expressing parts of a business solution architecture. This way ensures that the architecture is future-proofed for the business and at the same time able to realize the promise of agility and scalability through digitization.
The event hierarchy is the foundation for dynamic processing
Events map naturally to capabilities and activities which gives us the guidance needed to allow the users infinite ways of executing a generic processing pattern. If we then choose to implement this business solution architecture as an event based software architecture we can support the users no matter how they choose to work as long as they satisfy the goals in the activity events.
The event hierarchy is the foundation for dynamic processingThe Elements of an event based goal model
The Market Events serve as a reflection of the goal a customer seek from interacting with the business.
The Business Events serve as a reflection of the goal a business seek from interacting with the customer.
The Activity Events serve as a reflection of the goal a role seek from interacting within the servicing of a business event.
The Transaction Events serve as a reflection of the goal an actor seek from interacting within the servicing of an activity event.
When you should use this
When business requires future-proofing the support they get from information systems
When you consider moving to an agile enterprise architecture
When you are set to create a microservice architecture
What you should consider when you view this
This is not “the complete, nor may it be the correct” views of any specific insurance company architecture
Continuously refine your events as you go down the capability hierarchy
When naming events think of each event as the goal to be achieved
I’m currently in a process of changing my presentation design (the images shows what the new design looks like) for all my work. When I’ve stabilized the design and applied it across all canvases and related material I’ll link up the powerpoint to Slideshare.
Post change log
2015-07-10: Published initial post
I was talking to Marino the other day and he told me he would like a special capability inventory for a municipality. I said that there is no need to have a special capability inventory, the basic pattern exposed in the original capability inventory should cover any organization. In fact he should just use the original one and perhaps add the elements that are missing. The basic pattern behind the capability inventory is to view every organizations output as delivering services. This view enables us to use the same basic elements across all organizations. I can relate to the fact that the pattern and elements looks unfamiliar because it does not follow the way one is used to visualize a municipality. To remedy any confusions I´ve designed a naïve example below.
Elaborating on the capability inventory for municipalities
In the example I´ve removed the elements in the envision and enable rows and focused on the engage row. The text in the capability elements are not capabilities rather they describe the activities one would perform using the capability to reach the business goals.
When you should use this
Whenever you set about using a capability model of your enterprise
Whenever you have a new business problem to consider
What you should consider when you use this
Using the capability inventory and mapping out the basic activities will give you a good hunch but it is not the complete constructs needed to design the business.
It took me about 15 minutes to whip up the example
Download note
I’m currently in a process of changing my presentation design (the images shows what the new design looks like) for all my work. When I’ve stabilized the design and applied it across all canvases and related material I’ll link up the powerpoint to Slideshare.
The capability model could contain a lot of different elements but the basic ones are:
The Capability Areas which serve as a reflection of the functionality needed to run the business.
The Capability Groups which serve as blueprints for responsibility.
The Business Capabilities which serve as blueprints for business services.
The Resource Capabilities which serve as blueprints for microservices.
Frequently I use the capability model to project other elements on it. A very useful projection is visualizing the information ownership (entity groups, entities and sometimes even attributes) and the information responsibilities (business objects).
The Capability Information Model
The model below is an example showing ownership of information from a capability perspective. The model is the same as the one further down but it is focused on showing what information a capability group is the owner of.
Zooming into one of the capability groups (claim settlement management) we see that it contains information elements.
The Capability Collaboration Model
The model does not show every business object needed or created by the business capabilities, this is by choice. The aim here is to show what a capability collaboration model looks like. The main objective on a capability collaboration model is to show the information responsibilities.
Part of an insurance company capability architecture
Whenever you start to develop a capability architecture you will soon need to verify that the boundaries are where they should be.
How to build the model
Start by taking one of the business capabilities and look at what information it need that it doesn’t have in it´s own context. The business capability will need this information to do it´s work and to generate the outputs it is responsible for, as a result you get business object candidates.
Assign the business object you´ve identified to the one business capability that would generate it.
Draw an arrow from the providing business capability through the business object ending up on the consuming business capability.
Continue with tying the string between every other business capability that you found. Follow the steps 1, 2, 3 and 4 until you´ve exhausted all identified capabilities.
Rules of thumb
If you find business objects appearing out of nowhere then it is a fair assumption that either the consuming business capability is wrongly specified or there is a providing business capability that has not been identified yet.
If there is reason for it then you should include business capabilities that belongs outside of your corporate context.
A definition of a business object
A business object is defined as a specific set of entities representing the total amount of information needed by one business capability from one other business capability.
Business object is part of the information domain in the Inventory Model (EA framework).
When you should use this
Whenever you set about designing a capability model of your enterprise
When you are set to create a target context map for microservice architectures
What you should consider when you view this
This is not “the complete, nor may it be the correct” capabilities of any specific insurance company
Continuously refine your capabilities as you go
When naming capabilities think of each capability as part of a namespace
In the end it’s all about just doing it
Other things to consider from a capability model
The organizational perspective
If you work in an agile inspired environment then the capability groups gives guidance to where product managers would be responsible.
Teams should be set out to take responsibility for governing the business services realizing business capabilities.
The service perspective
The only way to access information governed by a capability group is through the business capabilities inside.
Each capability group is the sole provider of it´s business objects.
The realization perspective
Realizing a capability architecture can be done in many ways
The monolith pattern would use the capability areas as system boundaries and capability groups would then be represented by subsystems.
The service pattern would use the capability areas as knowledge boundaries and capability groups as information boundaries. Business capabilities would be used to orchestrate access to sets of microservices (resource capabilities).
I’m currently in a process of changing my presentation design (the images shows what the new design looks like) for all my work. When I’ve stabilized the design and applied it across all canvases and related material I’ll link up the powerpoint to Slideshare.
Post change log
2015-06-30: Published initial post
2015-07-01: Minor spelling adjustments
This model is part of my toolbox for working with capability architectures.
The Capability Inventory
I know that there is certain ways of naming a capability and also that there are other principles that people and I promote that you should adhere to when designing your capability map. Here I’ve taken some liberties in regards to those principles to make it easier to relate to the possible content in the boxes. This inventory is basically what I refer to as “functions as capabilities“, now there is certainly a way of mapping proper capabilities into this inventory.
The Capability Inventory Details
Details of production capability
Philip asked about the production capabilities so I’ve detailed some parts of production (above) to show where they could be situated. The detailed inventory map also shows how one can reuse the original layout to keep things in view.
Details of the sales capability
Details of the marketing capability
I have some more of these laying around in different formats and states of publicity. When I find the time I’ll update this post with more of these.
Download note: I’m currently in a process of changing my presentation design (the images shows what the new design looks like) for all my work. When I’ve stabilized the design and applied it across all canvases and related material I’ll link up the powerpoint to Slideshare.
When you should use this
Whenever you set about designing a capability model of your enterprise
When you need to understand what types of capabilities an enterprise can have
When you are set to create a target context map for microservice architectures
What you should consider when you use this
This is not “the complete, nor the correct” inventory of capabilities
There is no known right way of designing or describing a capability of an enterprise
There is techniques like reversing the names of processes and then consolidating them that could give you a fair hint of what capabilities you have in your enterprise
Look at other peoples capability inventories and take inspiration from those
The “best” capability inventory is the one you get enough people to use in their work
Develop the capabilities and the capability inventory in as wide spread community as possible
Continuously refine your capability inventory as you go
When naming capabilities think of each capability as part of a namespace
Post change log
2015-06-15: Published initial post
2015-06-20: Added the detailing view of production
2015-06-22: Added the detailing view of sales
2015-06-23: Added the detailing view of human management
2015-06-23: Updated the basic inventory of capabilities to reflect the sales capabilities directly
2015-06-24: Added the detailing view of marketing
This model is part of my toolbox for working with business architectures.
The Inventory Model
The important thing to remember is to be agile minded in use of tools like this. So, when I say extendable I mean that this is definitely not all things that could or should be in the inventory. Reconfigure it in the X, Y or Z axis as you see fit for purpose and make sure to deliver something of value.
Note: I’m currently in a process of changing my presentation design (the image shows what the new design looks like) for all my work. When I’ve stabilized the design and applied it across all canvases and related material I’ll link up the powerpoint to Slideshare.
When you should use this
Whenever you set about depicting the greater enterprise
This model is part of my toolbox for working with strategic architectures.
The Strategy Model
Note: I’m currently in a process of changing my presentation design (the image shows what the new design looks like) for all my work. When I’ve stabilized the design and applied it across all canvases and related material I’ll link up the powerpoint to Slideshare.
When you should use this
Whenever you set about understanding the greater enterprise
Achieving Business Outcome With Enterprise Architecture 
