Capability

When discussing capabilities, many different definitions come into light. It is not uncommon that this term is used interchangeably with others, such as business capability, technological/IT capability or organizational capability (e.g. in (Winter 2000)), but the intended meaning depends on the context in which the term is being used. This means that different authors use the same term for describing somewhat different things, which can be confusing. This section tries to clarify the concept of capabilities and highlight their meaning in the business context.

From the national defense angle, the US Department of Defense (DoD) officially defines a capability as ‘the ability to achieve a desired effect under specified standards and conditions through combinations of means and ways to perform a set of tasks’, linking capability-based planning to outcomes and metrics (Department of Defense 2008; Department of Defense 2009). Within the domain of security and defense sector more definitions of the term capability were

found. One of the most prominent ones is found in the “National Preparedness Guidelines” published by the US Department of Homeland Security in 2007, where capabilities are defined as providing the means to accomplish a mission or function and achieve desired outcomes by performing critical tasks, under specified conditions, to target levels of performance. In this document capabilities are characterised by their capacity (i.e. how many are needed) and their proficiency (i.e. how well must they be able to perform) (Department of Homeland Security 2007; Moore et al. 2010) and it is accompanied by the “Target Capabilities List” document published in the same year and which describes the core capabilities required to perform critical tasks. Attached to this concept is the work by (Cheng et al. 2011) and by (Tagarev 2009) who defines capability as “the capacity provided by a set of resources and abilities, to achieve a measurable result in performing a task under specified conditions and to specific performance standards”.

Similarly, from the practitioner world, Scott and Ulrich & Rosen define a capability as the fundamental element that provides an organization’s capacity to achieve a desired outcome (Scott 2009; Ulrich & Rosen 2011a). Scott states that the set of an organization’s capabilities can be regarded as its potential and that they represent the functional abilities needed to be

executed, in order for the organization to fulfill its mission. This perspective of capability as capacity originates again from the resource-based theory by (Grant 1991).

Taking a step back, and abstracting from the idea of a capability owned by an organization, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary generally defines a capability6 as:

1: the quality or state of being capable; also: ability

2: a feature or faculty capable of development: potentiality

3: the facility or potential for an indicated use or deployment <the capability of a metal to be fused> <nuclear capability>.

This threefold definition highlights the different aspects of capabilities, especially the first two; in other words possessing a capability means meeting the requirements that put their owner in a position of being able to perform something or obtain a characteristic, if the situation or the conditions ordain the owner to do so.

In TOGAF a capability is defined as “an ability that an organization, person or system possesses. Capabilities are typically expressed in general and high-level terms and typically require a combination of organization, people, processes, and technology to achieve. For example, marketing, customer contact, or outbound telemarketing” (The Open Group 2011). There are three important elements here: i) a capability can be owned not only by a person or an organization, but also by a system, ii) a capability is a high-level concept and iii) a capability is considered to be a composite object and not atomic; several components have to come together to yield a capability that has quality characteristics. Overall this definition comes very close to precisely describing what a capability is, although it would be more concrete if it

included the notion of potentiality. Therefore, the definition proposed here is slightly altered, to

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include capacity and potentiality and to group together organization, people and processes under ‘assets’:

A capability is an ability, capacity or potential that an organization, person or system possesses. Capabilities are typically expressed in general and high-level terms and typically require a combination of organization and different assets (e.g. people, processes, and technology) to be achieved and thus realize their goal.

With this high-level definition, a capability can be considered as a super class of all other sub- types of capabilities, or a generalization to put it differently, with a hierarchical structure. Consequently, those specialization sub-types inherit the characteristics of a capability and the definition for each one of them builds on top of the definition of a capability. While in the TOGAF ® definition there is no explicit connection of a capability with a goal, it is included in this one so that it makes the definition a bit more precise. It is true that all types of capabilities aim to achieve a desired effect or a goal, which in turn is connected to some kind of value; otherwise there is no point in having that capability. This connection of capability to a goal is also inherited in its subtypes, which we are going to discuss next. It should be noted here that the

differentiating factor of each type of capability is the different goal each one serves. In the definition above the goal is intentionally not strictly specified, since capability itself is a high level concept. Later, for all the subtypes of capability, the goals are more precisely stated.