Elizabeth Silva
Research Specialist, Sports Entertainment
Info-Tech Research Group

• You are a CIO, head of EA, or chief architect who needs to improve your organization’s understanding of business capabilities and how IT can provide support.
• You work for an organization that wants to sharpen its alignment and focus on organizational outcomes and value by using architecture to better inform innovation, stakeholder management, and IT strategy capabilities.
• Before executing any strategic initiatives, use this guide to understand how the organization creates value and the underlying capabilities and processes of the organization.

• You don’t know where or how to begin, or how to engage the right people, model the business, and drive the value of an architecture.
• The business and IT often speak in their own languages without a holistic and integrated view of mission, strategies, goals, processes, and projects.
• The business and IT often focus on a project, ignoring the holistic value of an overarching value stream and business capability view.

• Build your organization’s capability map by defining the organization’s value stream and validating the industry reference architecture.
• Use business capabilities to define strategic focus by defining the organization’s key capabilities and developing a prioritized strategy map.
• Assess key capabilities for planning priorities through a review of business processes, information, and application and technology support of key capabilities.
• Consolidate and prioritize capability gaps for incorporation into priorities.

Industry Overview: Sports Leagues

Sports leagues within North America and APAC are essentially the “master company” of the various teams, known as franchises. Franchises are only able to operate under their respective leagues, therefore teams do not play games against those within other leagues. North American and APAC leagues are organized in a closed league system. Formula One has also been described to be a closed league. Closed league sports are sometimes considered a form of sport monopoly where value appropriation is present.

Value appropriation is "related to advertising activities, which aim to capture value by improving competence in offering existing products or services." (Heldt, 2021)

Sports leagues with Europe act as a governing body that clubs (teams) of all levels belong to. Clubs are promoted to different leagues or divisions within the European system based on high- or poor-quality performance. Clubs are also able to play matches inside and outside of the league. European leagues are organized in an open league system where value creation is present.

Value creation is "related to new product development and research and development activities, which aim to create superior value for fans by developing products or services.“ (Heldt, 2021)

Sports Leagues, Franchises & Clubs

• No promotions
• Teams compete in one league competition
• Franchise system

• Annual promotion and relegation
• Teams/clubs may compete simultaneously in many competitions creating a multiple league system
• Clubs are not franchised by the league

• Collective sale of TV/OTT rights
• Centralized marketing

• Collective sale of TV rights
• Distributed marketing

• Limited substitution by the market
• Large territories

• Significant potential for substitution
• Shared territories

• Numerous cases of entry by rival leagues

• All leagues contained within the established hierarchy

• Draft (non active transfer market)
• Salary caps
• Collective bargaining

• Active transfer market
• No salary caps
• Individual bargaining

• Equal division of national broadcast income
• Gate sharing

• Sharing of TV/OTT income
• Little or no sharing on gate from competitions
• Centralized sale of TV rights

• Antitrust exemption for baseball
• Sports broadcasting act exempts national TV deals from antitrust

• Ticket allocations

Business value defines the success criteria of an organization as manifested through organizational goals and outcomes, and it is interpreted from four perspectives:

• Profit generation: The revenue generated from a business capability with a product that is enabled with modern technologies.
• Cost reduction: The cost reduction when performing business capabilities with a product that is enabled with modern technologies.
• Service enablement: The productivity and efficiency gains of internal business operations from products and capabilities enhanced with modern technologies.
• Customer and market reach: The improved reach and insights of the business in existing or new markets.

Business Value Matrix

Download the Sports League Business Reference Architecture Template

1.1 Define the Organization’s Value Stream

1.2 Develop a Business Capability Map

2.1 Define the Organization's Key Capabilities

2.2 Develop a Strategy Map

3.1 Business Process Review

3.2 Information Assessment

3.3 Technology Opportunity Identification

4.1 Consolidate and Prioritize Capability Gaps

• Defined and validated value streams specific to your organization
• A validated level 1 business capability map

• Identification of level 1 cost advantage creators
• Identification of level 1 competitive advantage creators
• Defined future-state capabilities

• Identification of capability process enablement
• Identification of capability data support
• Identification of capability application and technology support

• Prioritization of key capability gaps

DIY Toolkit

Guided Implementation

Workshop

Consulting

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Phase 4

Call #3: Model level 1 business capability maps.

Call #6: Introduce Info-Tech's capability assessment framework.

Call #8: Discuss and review prioritization of key capability gaps and plan next steps.

2.1 Define the Organization’s Key Capabilities

2.2 Develop a Strategy Map

3.1 Business Process Review

3.2 Information Assessment

3.3 Technology Opportunity Identification

4.1 Consolidate and Prioritize Capability Gaps

1.1.1

IDENTIFY AND ASSEMBLE KEY STAKEHOLDERS

• Who are the decision makers and key influencers?
• Who will impact the business architecture work? Who has a vested interest in the success or failure of the practice?
• Who has the skills and competencies necessary to help you be successful?

• Don’t focus on the organizational structure and hierarchy. Often stakeholder groups don’t fit the traditional structure.
• Don’t ignore subject matter experts on either the business or IT side. You will need to consider both.

1.1.2

DETERMINE HOW THE ORGANIZATION CREATES VALUE

• Who are your customers?
• What tasks are your customers looking to accomplish?
• How does your organization’s set of products and services help them accomplish that?
• What are the benefits the organization delivers to them?

• Don’t boil the ocean. Focus on your industry segment and how you deliver value to your partners and customers specifically.

1.1.3

DEFINE AND VALIDATE THE ORGANIZATION’S VALUE STREAMS

• How does the organization deliver those benefits?
• How does the customer receive the benefits?
• What is the scope of your value stream? What will trigger the stream to start and what will the final value be?

• Don’t start with a blank page. Use Info Tech’s value stream definitions on the following slides as a starting point and customize from there.

“The business context encompasses an understanding of the factors impacting the business from various perspectives, including how decisions are made and what the business is ultimately trying to achieve. The business context is used by IT to identify key implications for the execution of its strategic initiatives.” (Source: Business Wire, 2018)

Value
Streams

• For sports leagues to operate efficiently and effectively they must have a proper overarching strategy, planning for competitions and other events, and fan engagement management in place to be competitive and generate an ROI.

• The governance and management of the players and teams within a league plays a critical role in the success of a sports league and its overall worth. Providing proper player management, officiating of games, contract management, performance tracking, owner relations, and more is crucial to the management and success of a league that governs players and teams.

• The league decides how they would like to manage the different accounts and payments that they want to distribute to their respective franchises/clubs, such as TV/OTT rights, gate sharing, private and public funding, etc., where a percentage of these revenues go to the teams/clubs.

1.2.1

DETERMINE WHICH BUSINESS CAPABILITIES SUPPORT VALUE STREAMS

• What is the objective of your value stream? This can highlight which capabilities support which value streams.
• What are the activities that make up the business?
• Segmenting your value stream into individual stages will give you a better understanding of the steps involved in creating value.

• Don’t do this alone. Make sure the right stakeholders participate. The exercise of identifying capabilities for an organization is very introspective and requires deep analysis. It is challenging to develop a common language that everyone will understand and be able to apply. Don’t waste your efforts building an inaccurate depiction of the business.

1.2.2

ACCELERATE THE PROCESS WITH AN INDUSTRY REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE

• What are the activities that make up your business?
• Can these activities be tied to outcomes? If not, they might not apply to your organization.
• Are there any capabilities on the map that don’t fit the organization? Deselect them if yes.

• Don’t repeat capabilities. Capabilities are typically mutually exclusive activities.
• Don’t include temporary initiatives. Capabilities should be stable over time. The people, processes, and technologies that support capabilities will change continuously.

1.2.3

VALIDATE THE BUSINESS CAPABILITY MAP

• Are there any sensitive areas of the organization that may take this effort the wrong way? Engage them to get their input as early as possible to ensure they don’t feel left out or alienated.

• Don’t delay validating the maps with top level executives. Without their support, your architecture practice won’t be taken seriously.
• Don’t leave anyone out on the assumption that they won’t be interested. This process will foster alignment between organizational silos.

1.1 Define the Organization’s Value Stream

1.2 Develop a Business Capability Map

3.1 Business Process Review

3.2 Information Assessment

3.3 Technology Opportunity Identification

4.1 Consolidate and Prioritize Capability Gaps

2.1.1

DETERMINE COST ADVANTAGE CREATORS

• What is the source of your cost advantage? IT should support the capabilities that drive the cost advantage.
• Is the industry you operate in sensitive to prices?

• Don’t focus on capabilities that create an unsustainable cost advantage. Take a long term perspective and allocate your resources wisely.

2.1.2

DETERMINE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE CREATORS

• Are there any products or services your organization provides that customers consider superior to competitive offerings?
• Which capabilities enable the competitive advantage?
• How easy is it for competitors to neutralize your competitive advantage? Focus on the capabilities that are difficult to replicate by competitors to create a more sustainable advantage.

• Don’t determine the competitive advantages alone. Incorporate various perspectives from throughout the organization to truly understand how the organization competes in the marketplace.

2.1.3

DEFINE KEY FUTURE STATE CAPABILITIES

• Are your competitors doing anything to give them a competitive advantage? Can your organization easily replicate the capabilities needed to neutralize that advantage?
• How is the external environment (political, economic, social, or technological) likely going to change in the future? How might these changes impact your current key capabilities?

• Don’t blindly copy your competitors’ strategies. It is important to understand that each organization is unique; before focusing on key capabilities that might neutralize your competitors’ advantages, ensure they fit well with your overall strategy.

2.2.1

IDENTIFY THE STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES FOR THE BUSINESS

• Who are the decision makers and key influencers?
• Who will impact the strategic objectives for the business?
• Are there external forces that will impact the current strategic objectives?

• Don’t simply go with the existing documented strategic objectives for the business. Ensure they are up to date, and interview the decision makers to get the most updated objectives if needed.

2.2.2

MAP THE STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES TO THE IT PROGRAMS THAT SUPPORT THEM

• Focus on the value streams that truly drive the strategic objectives.
• Are there any capabilities that are not tied to outcomes?
• Are all strategic objectives supported with IT programs?

• Don’t be too granular. The audience for a strategy is interested in a higher level understanding of what IT is doing. As such, keep things at the program level as opposed to the individual projects that programs are composed of.

2.2.3

VALIDATE THE STRATEGY MAP AND PROGRAM PRIORITIZATION

• Are all strategic objectives equally important? If not, get a prioritized list of strategic objectives.
• Do any of the programs have critical dependencies that influence sequencing?
• If there are strategic objectives that do not have any IT programs mapped to them, consider adding new programs. Conversely, reconsider upcoming programs that do not have a connection to strategic objectives.

• Don’t delay validating the strategic maps with top level executives. A proactive approach will save you time in terms of rework and will maximize alignment.
• Don’t leave anyone out on the assumption that they won’t be interested. It is easy to miss key stakeholders be careful and organized.

Sports League X

1

2

3

1.1 Define the Organization’s Value Stream

1.2 Develop a Business Capability Map

2.1 Define the Organization’s Key Capabilities

2.2 Develop a Strategy Map

4.1 Consolidate and Prioritize Capability Gaps

3.1.1

ASSESS HOW WELL PROCESSES SUPPORT CAPABILITIES

• What processes are documented?
• Have the documented processes been communicated to the business users?
• Are some of the processes redundant? Has that been done on purpose or can you optimize them?
• Are there key capabilities that lack processes altogether?

• Don’t waste time. Only evaluate processes that are documented and communicated, then evaluate them for exclusivity.
• Don’t do this in a vacuum. Validate that you have captured all existing processes by speaking to other employees.

3.1.2

EVALUATE USER ADOPTION OF PROCESSES FOR KEY CAPABILITIES

• Is there regular monitoring for deviations from the defined process? Is this recorded and acted upon?
• Are there certain groups of users that are not following the processes in place? Why?

• Don’t think the lack of process adherence is simply the employee’s fault. In some cases, the processes might not be well designed or are outdated, thus warranting the need for refinement.

3.1.3

PRIORITIZE PROCESS REFINEMENT FOR KEY CAPABILITIES SCORING LEVEL “MEDIUM” OR BELOW

• Is business process management in your mandated area of influence, responsibility, or accountability? If not, consider who you may need to recruit for support from the business side to drive refinements.
• Communicate any new processes or changes to existing ones through a variety of mediums. Make it easy for the users/employees to reference them if needed.

• Don’t create redundant processes. Ensure there is minimal overlap with existing processes if you are creating a new process.
• Don’t forget to think about user adoption and governance when creating new processes. This might be more challenging, but it will ultimately ensure long term success.

Use process analysis and assessment to drive collaboration and integration.

• Organizations undergoing growth, either organically or through M&A, tend to develop in a piecemeal and short-sighted fashion in an attempt to preserve their view of agility. This can lead to the following pains:
  • Duplicated or conflicting business activities.
  • Processes that create bottlenecks by involving too many business units.
  • Manual rekeying of data into multiple systems.
  • Inefficient process for producing standard reports.
• These organizations are driven by the desire to effectively manage existing business processes while recognizing the need for a faster ability to share data, information, and insight across multiple systems and business units to support increasing demands for more rapid response.
• A primary goal of a strategy is to provide a framework that enables the current business environment to function as seamlessly as possible, allowing for flexibility when processes need to evolve.
• Through effective strategy design, IT can provide integration across business units by performing an analysis of how well the organizational capabilities are supported by processes. Specifically, IT should analyze and assess processes on the basis of adherence, enforcement, and overlap and on the presence of effective monitoring measures.

Figure above: Process Assessment Legend

3.2.1

ASSESS HOW WELL INFORMATION SUPPORTS CAPABILITIES

• What data exists to support the capability?
• Does the same data exist in various databases?
• What controls exist to ensure quality and integrity?
• Are there key capabilities that lack automated information altogether?

• Don’t waste time. Only evaluate information holdings that are central to the capability.
• Don’t do this in a vacuum. Validate that you have captured all existing data by collaborating with other IT and business unit employees.

3.2.2

EVALUATE ACCESSIBILITY TO INFORMATION FOR KEY CAPABILITIES

• Is data well integrated so executives do not have to access more than one source for the information they need? Is there a data warehouse capability to bring together data from disparate databases?
• Is there an end user business intelligence (BI) capability? Are users sufficiently trained in its use?

• Don’t think that the lack of information is the fault of any one IT unit or application. In most cases, there is a lack of a comprehensive approach to enterprise and data architecture at the core of the problem.

3.2.3

PRIORITIZE DATA IMPROVEMENTS FOR KEY CAPABILITIES SCORING LEVEL “MEDIUM” OR BELOW

• Is data management fully in your mandated area of influence, responsibility, or accountability? If not, consider who you may need to recruit for support from the business side to drive refinements.
• Effective data governance will require close collaboration between IT and the data owners on the business side.

• Don’t create redundant data. Ensure there is minimal overlap with existing data elements if you are creating a new application or database process.
• Don’t forget to think about end user access and reporting tools when creating new data holdings. This might be more challenging, but it will ultimately ensure long term success.

Assess the availability and quality of data in providing information as a business asset.

• Information is central to every organization’s success and ability to realize its goals. Too often organizations experience the following pains:
  • Duplicated or conflicting data residing in disparate databases.
  • Inadequate controls or edits on data.
  • Manual rekeying of data into multiple systems.
  • Inability to provide executives with reliable and easily accessible information for decision making.
  • Inability of business units to assume “ownership” of data.
• These organizations are driven by the desire to effectively manage existing business processes while recognizing the need for a faster ability to share data, information, and insight across multiple systems and business units to support increasing demands for more rapid response.
• A primary goal of a strategy is to provide a framework that enables information to be viewed as a critical business asset, across organizational boundaries, and accessed as seamlessly as possible.
• Through effective strategy design, IT can provide integration of data across business units by performing an analysis of how well the organizational capabilities are supported by information. Specifically, IT should analyze and assess data on the basis of quality, integrity, and ownership and on the presence of an effective data governance framework.

Figure above: Information Assessment Legend

3.3.1

ASSESS HOW WELL CAPABILITIES ARE SUPPORTED BY APPLICATIONS

• How flexible are the applications?
• How well do the applications integrate?
• How easy are the applications to learn and use?
• Are there overlap, unplanned redundancy, or data quality issues?

• Don’t perform a complete overhaul. Consider continuity in delivering business services before you rip and replace everything.
• Don’t forget about shadow IT. Ask around to get an accurate understanding of what applications are being used to support business capabilities.

3.3.2

UNCOVER OPPORTUNITIES FOR APPLICATIONS TO CREATE VALUE

• Prioritize which unsupported key capabilities to focus on based on their importance.

• Don’t focus on unsupported key capabilities that will require too much investment.
• Don’t build an application just because you can. Research existing solutions before deciding to build in house.

3.3.3

COMPARE RESULTS WITH INDUSTRY RESEARCH TO DETERMINE A PLAN OF ACTION

• What are the future needs of the business?
• What are the compliance requirements?
• How much vendor support will you require?
• Do you already have the underpinning infrastructure required to run the applications or will an investment need to be made?
• How well will the new application integrate with existing applications?

• Don’t forget that every organization is unique. Develop a strong understanding of how the key capability needs to be supported, who the users will be, and if the application will integrate well with existing solutions before you make a purchase.
• Buying isn’t always better than building. If you discover through software reviews that the existing solutions will not meet your needs, revisit the option to build an in house solution.

New technologies can create opportunities for business agility and help develop resilience to changing market conditions.

• Business agility is essential to stay competitive. However, the application portfolio of many organizations cannot sufficiently support the flexibility and efficiency the business needs because of legacy challenges.
• Organizations experience application sprawl over time, caused by many factors, that can end up costing more for licenses, operational resources, and maintenance.
• Organizations are looking for ways to modernize their applications, but they want to develop options without introducing additional risks. Adopting a capability-based approach to assessing applications will enable the IT department to identify opportunities to:
  • Automate tasks through the strategic selection and implementation of applications.
  • Integrate applications that have cross-capability implications.
  • Rationalize the application portfolio.
  • Eliminate redundant or legacy applications that don’t deliver enough value.
• The market availability for software applications dedicated to supporting a specific capability (or set of capabilities) can serve as an indicator of the presence of legacy challenges. Where there is a lack of application availability, it may be a signal of either custom developed, ad hoc, and makeshift solutions or shadow IT.

Figure above: Technology Opportunity Assessment Legend

1.1 Define the Organization’s Value Stream

1.2 Develop a Business Capability Map

2.1 Define the Organization’s Key Capabilities

2.2 Develop a Strategy Map

3.1 Business Process Review

3.2 Information Assessment

3.3 Technology Opportunity Identification

4.1.1

ASSESS CAPABILITY GAPS VIA A MOSCOW ANALYSIS

• How big is the difference between current needs and the assessment of the factors that support each capability?
• Are there any groups of capabilities that have low scores from the assessments? Consider a root cause analysis to determine what could be impacting multiple capabilities.

• Don’t forget about healthy capabilities. Enhance the green (low gap) capabilities once you have resolved the issues with the red and yellow (large gap) key capabilities.

4.1.2

PRIORITIZE KEY CAPABILITY GAPS BASED ON MANDATE, ALIGNMENT, AND EFFORT

• If a capability has people and process challenges associated with it already, a technology solution alone may not suffice.
• Prioritize the enhancement of key capabilities with significant gaps that are in your mandated responsibilities.
• Will the future needs of the business change which capabilities are most important?

• Don’t overstep your mandate. In some organizations, IT is expected to have influence over business processes, but that is not always the case. Equally, HR concerns may be perceived as outside the mandate of IT. As such, IT should focus first on the key capabilities that have clear technology gaps to avoid mandate friction.

• Direct strategic IT investments based on the collective output of the capability assessments.
• When combined with a solid understanding of business priorities and IT’s mandate, a capability assessment can be the driving force that informs a unified perspective on the sequencing of an organization’s strategic IT initiatives.
• Assessments based on how well a capability is supported by people (via organizational analysis), process (via process review), data (via information assessment), and technology (via application, infrastructure, data, and security improvements) will inform the overall health of a capability, or in other words, the size of a capability gap. This information, when contrasted with the concept of a MoSCoW-based effort to value, forms an enhanced decision-making framework that can be used to determine initiative sequencing on a strategic roadmap.
• If a capability has a large gap (is poorly supported by people, process, data, or technology), it should be considered as high effort, or difficulty, to address. When the capability is well aligned with business priorities and the IT mandate, the capability gap should be considered as high value to address.
• See the figure on the right: IT leaders should focus their efforts on the lower-right quadrant (high value, low effort). In the top-right quadrant (high value, high effort), IT should seek business support to drive the initiative. Capability gaps on the right side of the quadrant overall are good candidates for capability outsourcing.

Value to Effort Impact Ratio

• HE = High Effort
• LE = Low Effort
• HV = High Value
• LV = Low Value

Value to Effort Impact Ratio

• HE = High Effort
• LE = Low Effort
• HV = High Value
• LV = Low Value

Reference Architecture