A business capability is an abstraction that helps describe what the enterprise does to achieve its vision, mission, and goals. A business capability can be further decomposed into business processes, which define how the enterprise does this, in terms of activities performed by people that utilize tools (technology). Business capabilities are the building blocks of the enterprise.
- Step 1: Work with the business to create a business capability map (see examples in Appendix A of Storyboard: Covertly Establish a Business-Centric, Value-Driven EA Capability).
- Decompose the enterprise into business capabilities.
- Stay at the capability level (focus on the what) and defer the definition of business processes (how) to a later time.
- Step 2: Interview key business stakeholders to identify critically important business capabilities and significant capability gaps. Draw a capability evaluation matrix using the Business Capability Evaluation Matrix Template.
Consider how important the capability is to the enterprise achieving its goals, as well as how significant the gap is between as-is and target states of the capability.