Does Capability Equate to Process?
Capability is a measure of the capacity of an organisation to provide a product or service that fulfills an existing or envisaged need to a customer or a market.
In this sense, Capabilities are derived by bring together existing functions, data, services, products, technologies, skills, etc. to effect the delivery of the need in the form in which the “customer” demands.
Business Process could also be defined as bringing together functions, data, services, products, technologies, skills, etc. to arrive at a desired business outcome.
The first diagram below is a schematic of the Elementary Business Functions required to meet a customer or market requirement, that is, provide a Capability.
The lower diagram shows the order in which Elementary Business Functions in the Function Catalogue are carried out in order to execute a Business Process.
This graphical representation is a very strong suggestion that Capabilities are in fact business processes that meet a specified customer or Market requirement.
What do you think?
Does Capability Equate to Process? I am not 100% aligned.
Yes, process has a significant impact on an organisations ability to do business, but does process determine how capable an organisation is to do business? I don’t believe so.
I suggest that a business process, and its supporting procedures, is the mechanism by which a product or service is delivered and that whilst data, skills and technologies affect a process, they are not components of the actual process itself.
Measuring organizations Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) does exactly that, it provides indicators to identify areas of success and areas for improvement. KPIs are invariably influenced by a number of other factors (related KPIs), for example:
• Quality of data e.g. completeness, accuracy
• Service of supporting applications e.g. uptime, latency
• Performance of people e.g. competency, motivation
The above, when ‘tweaked’ will affect capability without necessarily affecting process, thus process is certainly a good place to start driving capability but it would be premature to end there!
Thought provoking as always John!
Hi Joe
Thank you. Look forward to staying in touch.
John
I have enjoyed your posts on Enterprise Architecture and feel that I have gotten benefit from them.
Joe