In Business Capability Modeling: Theory and Practice, we introduced a set of techniques for modeling business capabilities: unique combinations of people, business processes, and physical assets that deliver value to customers or shareholders. The business capability model is a useful abstraction that connects business strategy to the future business architecture.

Theory: What is a Business Capability?  A business capability is an ability or capacity for a company to deliver value, either to customers or shareholders. Business capabilities are a useful abstraction because they represent the next level of detail beneath the business strategy. A business capability consists of three major components: business processes, people, and physical assets.

A&G Editor Jonas Lamis speaks with Philip Allega, Reseach Vice President at Gartner and Enterprise Architecture Analyst. They discuss recent trends in EA support for the C-Suite, and cover the 5 key ways the CEO can use EA to support the business.

In my previous posting on Business Capability Modeling, I synthesized some of the leading perspectives from the analyst community.  Since that posting we have also released a podcast with Frank Malta from Merck on their approach to business capability modeling.

I’ve also heard from our community by email and have seen several interesting threads in the blogosphere that I want to share today:

A note from Jan Nilsson Manager EA, RGDS

Recently, I had the chance to talk with Frank Malta, the Chief Architect of drug manuacturer Merck.  Frank’s EA team has been eagerly pursuing a vision of enterprise wide business capability modeling for a number of years and has generated quite a bit of success.