What do tigers and zebras have to do with Business Capabilities? Imagine you have a zoo, and you want to make a catalog of your existing animals for reporting purposes. Which attributes would you use to categorize your animals?
In the case of tigers and zebras, they're both striped mammals. Thus both belong in the same class. But you cannot simply put them under the same category, because one is a Carnivora and the other a Perissodactyla. If you identify them by the wrong attributes (both have stripes), you will end up with your tigers eating your zebras when you put them in the same cage?
A capability map is a managed taxonomy of what we do in the enterprise.
We would start by building a functional decomposition model in the old days. Today that's a Capability Map. So capabilities are what the enterprise does, and they are abstract concepts that represent combinations of tangible things:
All of the above categories are combined to deliver the Capability. They are also the four areas that you can use to assess your Capability Health and Maturity.
Even if you start with a Reference Model, you often have to create your Capabilities from scratch. You would also usually need to define an area in the Capability Map that the Reference Model doesn't cover and is unique to your enterprise. (Doing Capability Based Planning on ServiceNow is very easy with Designer.)
To do that, you should use the noun-verb convention for defining processes:
Step 1: identify the noun. Show the business objects. These are things that the business cares about, e.g., "product".
Step 2: start pairing that noun with some verbs, e.g., "Product Management" or "Product Manufacturing".
Here are some tips we have gathered for you:
Hear everything on the topic in our on-demand webinar:
If you use ServiceNow to store your data, you can then manage it directly through embedded processes and workflows across the whole enterprise without leaving the platform. And by using applications that live on the platform, your data quality automatically goes up, because you don't need to worry about inaccurate or outdated data. Applications such as Designer and UPM-X use live data you already have on ServiceNow and make sure that your Capability Maps and reporting are updated in real-time. This availability of live data is especially great for the Technology Health & Technology Risk, which is usually one of the biggest issues for Enterprise Architects.
One of the biggest problems Enterprise Architects face is getting the right data and making sure that it is up-to-date. This is why having your data and Enterprise Architecture solution on the same platform is both time and resource saving!
Learn more on the topic by watching our webinar about Business Capabilities 101 on-demand:
What are the benefits of having your Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) tool on ServiceNow? Let’s have a chat, so we can understand your Enterprise Architecture needs and use-cases better. Only then will we give you a demo of the ins-pi tool that we think will fit your Enterprise Architecture needs best.