Welcome
to Transformation and Innovation 2007
The Business Transformation Conference
Chip Wilson
Chief Technology Officer
Geniant
Using Capability Modeling to Facilitate
SOA Adoption
May 22-24, 2007 1
The Business Transformation Conference Washington Dulles Hilton

Four Domains of
Enterprise Architecture
May 22-24, 2007 2
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Why Business Architecture
The forgotten stepchild of
•
Enterprise Architecture
• The least integrated of the four
• The four domains are interdependent
• None should be defined in isolation
• Necessitates a consistent approach to defining Enterprise
Architecture
• Need for alignment between business and IT is merely an
alternative way of expressing this
Too little effort has been put into creating a common
•
model that encompasses all aspects of Enterprise
Architecture
May 22-24, 2007 3
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What’s Wrong with
Business Process Modeling
• Represents how the business operates
at a given time
Documents and communicates how
•
rather than what
Processes change frequently
•
Optimizing for agility implies a desire to
•
facilitate change
Aligning IT with a business architecture
•
that changes frequently sets a company
up for frequent changes in the IT
architecture
May 22-24, 2007 4
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What Should We Model Instead?
• Focus on what is accomplished
• Business functions tend to remain
stable; underlying processes may
change radically and frequently
• Outcomes of processes typically do not
fluctuate at all
• The level of abstraction where processes
are defined by the purpose they serve
May 22-24, 2007 5
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What Is This Approach Based On?
• A basis can be found in business literature
addressing core competencies
• The competencies of the business are the what,
regardless of how they are accomplished
• “Capability Modeling” is an
emerging technique for
analyzing a business or industry
and modeling it in terms of
these competencies
May 22-24, 2007 6
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Capabilities are the
Building Blocks of Business
• Basic outcomes of Capability
business processes
• Encapsulate resources People
• People
Technology Procedures
• Technology
• Procedures Other Resources
• Other resources
• Joined together in networks to create higher
level business processes
• Composed of processes built on lower level
capabilities
May 22-24, 2007 7
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Business Unit Capabilities
• Defines a business unit’s purpose
• Provides a black box view SOA
• Hides internal implementation
• A direct input to service design
• Parallel black box approach
encapsulates a service’s
implementation behind its interface
May 22-24, 2007 8
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Capability Model Attributes
• Capabilities
• Purpose
• Service level expectation
• Customers
• Level of granularity
• Relationships
• Boundaries
May 22-24, 2007 9
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Levels of Granularity
• Multiple levels model the business in
successively finer levels of detail
• Capability Rule of Thumb:
• Coarse-grained enough that it remains
constant over time
• Fine-grained enough that all
stakeholders understand it
May 22-24, 2007 10
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Networks of Capabilities
• Relationships are as important to the Capability
Model as the capabilities themselves
Dependencies between capabilities and the
•
information that passes between them
• Indirect relationship via a higher level business process
• Capabilities can serve in an oversight capacity,
governing execution of other capabilities
• Capabilities can gather metrics on other capabilities or
in some way optimize their execution
May 22-24, 2007 11
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The Business Boundary
Defines The Value Chain
Company
Outsourced
functions
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The Physical Boundary
Defines the Corporate Entity
Environmental Outsourced value
XYZ, Inc.
chain functions
Capabilities
Operational
Capabilities
Everything outside the business boundary
May 22-24, 2007 13
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Core Competencies
Define Strategic Capabilities
• Delineate core competencies
(capabilities) from non-strategic
capabilities
• Core competencies converge with
physical boundary in an ideal business
architecture
• Retain core competencies within the
corporate entity
• Outsource non-strategic capabilities
May 22-24, 2007 14
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Capability Boundary
Defines the Interface
Outside the capability
- Black box view of the capability
- What it does rather than how it does it
Inside the capability
- Implementation of the capability
- Irrelevant to the capability model
May 22-24, 2007 15
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Business Context Diagram
Bu
sin
es
s
Bo
un
da
ry
May 22-24, 2007 16
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Enabling Agile
Business Architecture
Decouple business processes from IT systems
• Allow each to change independently from the other
• Reconfigure rapidly to respond to a changing competitive
landscape
• Evolve systems on their own lifecycle, without affecting
business processes
May 22-24, 2007 17
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Enabling Agile
Application Architecture
• IT systems must be decoupled from each other
Allow each system to
•
evolve independently of
others
• Swap out entire
systems without
impacting dependent
systems
• System interfaces must be decoupled from their
implementation
May 22-24, 2007 18
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Benefits of Decoupling
• Flexibility
• Reduced IT development costs
• Facilitates outsourcing non-core
competencies
• Orchestrating services from multiple
systems enables business process
automation
• Business analysts can implement new
business processes and automate
existing processes
May 22-24, 2007 19
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Benefits of a
Single Point of Contact
• Consistent self-service experience for all
• Keep systems and processes that provide
competitive advantage
• External users receive self-service
environment designed specifically for
their needs
• Improves employee visibility into
company operation
• Facilitates collaboration between remote
teams
May 22-24, 2007 20
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Requirements for Success
Executive Sponsorship
Communication between Business and IT
Business Focused IT
May 22-24, 2007 21
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Executive Sponsorship
• An SOA adoption program needs
appropriate sponsorship
Requires a strong vision grounded in
•
SOA best practices
SOA
Must be led from the top down
•
Create a common vocabulary between
•
business and IT
Capability Modeling creates
•
tremendous synergies – aligns the
entire Enterprise Architecture stack
from top to bottom
May 22-24, 2007 22
The Business Transformation Conference Washington Dulles Hilton

Communication Between
Business and IT
IT must understand the strategic business direction
•
• An ongoing dialogue on business process will:
• Provide a business context for Enterprise Architecture
• Give the business community a suite of tools to automate,
improve, or even redesign business processes
Business processes:
•
• Are an important part of the alignment of IT and business
• Should not be the basis for a common understanding
May 22-24, 2007 23
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Ensuring IT is Business Focused
• The technical organization needs to:
• Have a solid grounding in the company’s
history
• Understand why the business operates
the way it does
• Identify opportunities for greater efficiency
• Technical community must be willing and able
to keep communication channels open to:
Keep abreast of the competitive landscape and
•
the operation of the business
• Identify opportunities to leverage technology to
further business strategy
May 22-24, 2007 24
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Adoption Process
• Enterprise Assessment
• Current State – Identify
systems, processes and capabilities
• Future State – Envision ideal
systems and capabilities
• Gap Analysis – Develop a roadmap for
aligning the IT environment with the
business objectives
• Implement the roadmap
May 22-24, 2007 25
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Enterprise Application Map
May 22-24, 2007 26
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Read More
• Align Journal
• Jan/Feb 2007 issue
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Thank You
Chip Wilson
Chief Technology Officer
Geniant
cwilson@geniant.com
www.geniant.com
May 22-24, 2007 28
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