Most entrepreneurs understand the meaning of a “Pivot”. A Pivot is a change of direction for the entire organization in order to take advantage (or find) an opportunity that expands the company’s business. A pivot can create an atmosphere of what appears to be total chaos and without proper management, can leave a business slogging along instead of soaring higher. However, by understanding the capabilities of your company, capability maps can make pivots more manageable. A pivot is one of the few times where capabilities may become fluid in order to adapt to the new direction. Business architecture usually assumes that capabilities are relatively stable – not so with a pivot.

Businesses are under constant challenge to deliver growth and profitability.  Business process improvements and other enterprise quality initiatives are vital for the enterprise to do more with less, but they are not sufficient.  When businesses feel there is opportunity for transformation, they may engage a business architect. Many organizations do not have the benefit of established architecture processes and architecture governance for the enterprise, which makes the task of the business architect even more difficult.  It becomes incumbent on the business architect to educate and navigate stakeholders through architectural aspects of business transformation.

During the recent assessment of an organization, the topic of CM popped up as a reoccurring theme when it came to problems being experienced throughout the organization.  The one thing that became exceedingly clear was that everyone’s definition for CM was very different.  One of the prime roles for any business architect is to make sure they are looking holistically across the organization and that everyone is working from the same vocabulary.  This is not the first time I am running into the topic of “CM” as a source of chaos.

By William Ulrich & Jim Rhyne

A recently published article entitled “Business Capability Architecture Is the Tie that Binds All” discussed how to use business capabilities to tie business strategy, enterprise change, and project portfolio prioritization.[i] We concur that strategy, enterprise change, and portfolio management are managed more effectively using business architecture, and agree that capabilities are a component of business architecture However we view the article’s notion of “business capability architecture” as being incomplete. We will discuss why this concept is incomplete and how it can be extended through value mapping.