When I just learned some BA recently, I felt that this model of "customer proposition-value stream-capability" of BA might help to save the value stream of ITIL 4, and it seemed difficult to give a practical case. So I'm going to refer to the relevant content in BA and see if I can give a definition.
Look through the old paper pile and find out a bunch of definitions about ability:
●TOGAF 9. 1: Ability is the ability of an organization, an individual or a system. Capabilities are usually expressed in general and advanced terms, and usually require a combination of organizations, people, processes and technologies to achieve them. For example, marketing, customer contact or external telemarketing.
●BIZBOK 4. 1: Ability is a specific talent that an enterprise may own or exchange to achieve a specific goal or result.
●ArchiMate3. 1: Ability represents the ability of an activity structure element (such as an organization, an individual or a system).
●Bas van Gils (strategic alliance): CAPBILITY = Capacity× Capability.
-ability refers to a certain skill and proficiency. It should be noted that ability is a relative term: an actor (person, machine, computer) may be more proficient than others. Through (formal) training and practice, their level can be improved.
Ability refers to the extent to which actors (people, machines, computers) can use their skills to achieve a goal. Releasing/adding resources to available pools will affect capacity.
● Buzz Van Gilles? Business competence is the ability of an entity-an individual or an organization-to create or deliver some real-world effects (results) in a specific business execution environment. If the environment changes, yesterday's ability may disappear. Even if it is true that you did something yesterday, it doesn't mean that you can do it tomorrow. Capabilities exist only when all the resources needed to realize them are available. No resources-no ability; Ability/knowledge/skill is not enough to have this ability. If you outsource, you lose your ability.
● Richard hillier: Business ability refers to the ability to carry out business activities, which is considered as a necessary condition for success and needs specific management.
● Bain Company; Company: ability, which combines people, processes, information and technology, strengthens strategic elements and enables organizations to stand out from the competition.
Referring to the above, I try to give the definition of "capability" in ITIL context: capability is the combination of process, information and technology, organization and personnel, partners and suppliers, which can enable an organization to achieve the specified results.
Simply put, it is to perform tasks or activities with the help of resources (PPT) to achieve the required results (such as SLA). In addition, the formula CAPBILITY = capacity x capacity gives me great inspiration. Being able to maintain computers independently is a gift, but maintaining all desktop terminals is an ability. When a capability is reused, its proficiency (or performance level) should become higher. I can imagine the pressure of Taobao backstage on the day of the Double Eleven. It's like Bain &; According to the definition of the company, the proficiency and richness of the ability make the enterprise have a competitive advantage and even become its core competitiveness.
As for ability, it can be defined as a task that an individual, system or organization can accomplish well without any help or support.
As for how to use my ability, I translated a picture for your reference:
? Figure 1: Consistency diagram of strategy, business architecture and operation mode using business architecture.
What should I pay attention to in ability appraisal?
The first thing to emphasize is that the definition of ability is "what", not "how". In the process of defining ability, we need to put aside technology and system and only pay attention to what must be done now to meet the challenges of the present and the future. It is worth mentioning that there is a saying that "function" should not be included in the category of ability, because all families have it, and it is not a unique "ability". Personally, I think that even from this perspective, each organization will have its own characteristics in each function. Some may focus on "stability", while others focus on "sensitivity" to tap the potential. So similar strategic management, customer relationship management, product and service deployment, enterprise support (where IT management comes in handy), financial management, marketing and sales should all be organizational capabilities.
Secondly, the ability should be relatively stable, even if the organization changes, there should not be too much fluctuation. Unless there is a major business model transformation, it will have an impact on the ability. From this point of view, it smacks of "first principle". We should look at "capability" from a static perspective, while we should look at "value stream" from a dynamic perspective. Because the latter consists of various stages/steps, it needs to be changed as needed in the process.
Third, the ability to provide assistance is not necessarily limited to Abu Dhabi. Sometimes, we even need to get it across organizations. For example, most IT organizations in China often do not have the ability of financial management or even personnel management. If you need to acquire or build these abilities, you can only use artificial hands.
Fourthly, because the value stream is closely related to the value proposition and stakeholders, the ability serves the value stream, so when defining the ability, we should not only get expert opinions, but also seize the opportunity to publicize it to stakeholders, so that they can further understand and get their support.
Fifth, the ability can be layered. For details, please refer to the capability map from BIZBOK translated by WeChat ID: Xiaoxiao Chengfeng Research Institute. The figure divides the ability into three levels. We can pay special attention to the level of support ability and consider the related practices of ITIL as different levels of ability.
Figure 2: Bizbok capability grading diagram
Finally, we can use a capability map to show the collection of capabilities, which can not only be mapped by value streams, but also provide support for strategies at the highest level. Therefore, it is necessary to invite relevant parties who make strategies to join the competency definition team.
When building capabilities, we also need to pay attention to:
1. Determine what capabilities are needed for new strategy and new competition.
2. Find out the gap between the skills and abilities required by the current business.
3. What partners, suppliers, knowledge, technology, systems and training are needed to develop capabilities?
4. Understand what is needed to transform it capabilities into business capabilities or business functions, or how to use IT to enhance business capabilities and keep in line with the strategy.
For this ability, we can consider using the following template to record:
Ability:
Name:
Statement:
Reason:
Skills required:
Required capacity:
References and standards:
Internal (available) repository:
External (available) repository:
Owner:
Workflow status:?
Version:
Source:
Note: For the contents of the above articles, please refer to:
1, the article is from LeanIX.
2. The article comes from Long 1.
3. White Paper: Use business architecture to align business model with strategy.
4、? Wechat ID: PPT of Xiao Xiao riding style