Top 20 Attributes to Record about a Business Capability

A business capability is an acquired and organized "ability" within a company and takes hard work to put in place.

A business capability is a specific ordering of Processes, People, Resources, Information and Technology aimed at creating a defined business outcome. Organization capabilities are delivered when various resources work together for a purpose to achieve an outcome. So, the capability is mapped to these resources (intangible or tangible resources). Then relate capabilities to strategic elements like goals/objectives, and measures/metrics. Are you considering these resources and strategic elements part of capability attribute?

In general, a Capability consists of Knowledge, Organization, Process, and Technology. The aforementioned are generally considered to be 'enablers' or 'resources'. Capability = capacity (inward strength) + ability (outward to do things), Capabilities, along with its associated attributes are generally depicted in a meta-model. The meta-model has many more elements, the related attributes may include: 

1) Owner (org units owning)
2) Lifecycle (emerging, proposed, production, retired) Status
3) Maturity Level
4) Business Value (Cost, Revenue produced, ROI) 

5) Strategic Alignment

6) Return on Investment
7) Supporting Business Functions (de-composition)
8) Processes associated with capability
9) Supporting Business Services
10) Supporting Applications
11) Programs/Initiatives/projects delivering/enhancing capability
12) Resilience, associated enterprise risks, constraints

13) Skills Fit

14) Knowledge (internal/external)

15) Data Quality

16) Agility

17) Optimization

18) Opportunities to improve

19) Culture and Forms of Communications 

20) Policies/Routines 

The Capability fulfills a need which is part of a Value Proposition. There is often a supported Business Scenario associated with the Capability. Thus, a capability is also defined as "the proven possession of characteristics required to perform a particular service and to produce a particular result with the required performance"–with attributes about historical, actual, potential and required performance in form of KPIs, metrics/measures. The often described business capabilities such as Robustness, Sensitivity, Comprehensiveness, Speed, Responsiveness, Agility, Improvement, Sensitivity, Optimization, Resilience, etc. 

A business capability is an acquired and organized "ability" within a company and takes hard work to put in place; it can therefore not be transferred because of the degree of organizational learning and organization that goes with it. Besides functional capabilities, an effective enterprise today needs to cultivate a set of digital/change capabilities to adapt to new business dynamics; it’s the 21st Century Business Transformation Capabilities.

Posted in: Business Process Management,EA,Enterprise Capability