Recommendations for BiZZdesign

BiZZdesign, which has sponsored this research, can benefit from it in more than one ways, primarily by supporting its commercial potential. BiZZdesign offers integral solutions to its customers in different areas, such as Business Model Management, Enterprise Architecture Management, and Lean Project Management. These solutions typically consist of consultancy, tools, and training components. A similar solution could be developed for capability-based

planning and offered as an integrated approach including the CBP method and related best practices, tool support, and training.

First, the method can be simplified to make it less resource demanding and it can be tailored to meet the needs of a specific organization. Because the proposed method has been defined in such a way that it can be used by organizations in different levels of preparedness, some steps or even entire phases can be excluded, like for example Phase I. An analyst or a consultant going into an organization should before anything else assess the current practices and level of

preparedness, as well as factors that would have an effect on a capability-based planning effort. Possible questions they should ask include the following:

 Does the organization have a validated and well-defined business strategy?

 Are there presently business capabilities defined in the organization?

 If there are, at which level?

 If there are, to what degree are the business capabilities of the organization linked to its Enterprise Architecture?

 What are the restrictions regarding resource availability and implementation timeline? Best practices can be applied when defining and mapping capabilities, as briefly described in Table 8 and Table 11, and Table 10 respectively. A simple way to make them more accessible would be to have a set of reference cards or a handbook that showcase with the aid of examples how to perform these activities.

The proposed method follows a qualitative approach for assessing the state of capabilities for reasons explained in section 10.1.2. However, if possible, a quantitative approach should be preferred using performance data for the resources. This would enable the adoption of SMART criteria for capabilities and of an analytic hierarchy process for assessing the capabilities. Therefore, the analyst or the consultant has to investigate if and to which degree performance data is available and decide which approach fits the organization better.

Because capability-based planning will bring change to the organization, performing an impact analysis beforehand is recommended. Adopting capability-based planning is a major decision and this can help foresee and evaluate the associated consequences and decide early on the course of action.

Second, regarding tool support, BiZZdesign can incorporate in BiZZdesign Architect, the tool for Enterprise Architecture, not only the introduced concepts of capability, capability increment, resource, and metric, but also the ability to connect the capabilities of an organization to concepts of lower abstraction, such as resources and business processes. This way, capabilities can be somewhat quantified and planning for their development or improvement can be made more solid. Perhaps integration with the BiZZdesigner tool can offer further insight, if that would be technically feasible.

A tool with this feature will also make possible to apply lenses on the capability map or the capability map view on ArchiMate to dynamically color the capabilities according to target and present maturity levels and deltas between the two. This is currently possible in BiZZdesign Architect, by applying different views (e.g. the Colour View). However, many possibilities exist for applying different lenses that highlight different aspects of the business capabilities of an organization (e.g. which business capabilities are strategic, tactical, or operational, how business capabilities perform compared to the industry average and so on).

Assuming that the supporting data about the performance and costs of the associated resources are available and dynamically updated, it can also simplify the monitoring of the performance of the capabilities, post-implementation. This way, possible combinations of strategic business capabilities can be generated and the one with the optimal trade-off can be selected during planning (as described in Step G of the method in sub-chapter 5.3). Such a feature, apart from the simplification of the process, would also provide a clear visualization of attention areas with an appropriate lens for rapid and easy analysis and decision making.

Related to the above and especially for when a quantitative approach is followed for assessing the capabilities, a useful addition would be a ‘wizard’ tool or add-on component. This would guide the user through the process of inventorying the present capabilities in all levels of abstraction and defining the target capabilities. It could also provide a standardized interface of connecting a capability to the associated resources and business processes, or other capabilities.

Third, a training course offered by BiZZdesign about capability-based planning, should aim to communicate the method and the best practices mentioned earlier. Training should address for example:

 Performing scenario planning

 Separating a business capability from a business process or a business function

 Defining a business capability on the right abstraction level

 Selecting the optimal set of strategic business capabilities

 Breaking down business capabilities into capability increments

 Defining a timeline for development

Summarizing, a starter kit for capability-based planning would consist of BiZZdesign Architect with the ability to model, connect, visualize, measure and break down business capabilities, a white paper presenting the method and the ArchiSurance example and a handbook or reference cards containing the notation and the viewpoints, best practices and how-to’s. A training offered by BiZZdesign would act complementarily, offering guidance and support to the customers.

Apart from the above, a white paper can be proposed to The Open Group by BiZZdesign, with the findings of this research. At the time of writing, a kick-off meeting for initiating the project of capability-based planning has been scheduled, with the cooperation of the ArchiMate and Architecture Forums of The Open Group. Several elements of this research could possibly be

used in this effort: the definition set, the method, the extension of the ArchiSurance case, and of course the language extensions.