Business Capability–Based Enterprise Architecture Roadmap

What Is Business Capability?

Business capability represents an organization’s ability to perform activities that generate valuable outcomes. Business functions are expressed in terms of business results and value; the concept originates from MODAF and was later adopted by TOGAF.

Many enterprise architects and organizations do not yet fully use them, but they are gradually becoming a common EA deliverable and a way to model operational views.

They are popular because they tie business functions to results and value rather than pure functional or IT terminology, ensuring alignment between IT and business and linking capabilities to customer journeys and strategic scenarios.

Since executing an activity involves many parts of an organization, business capability is modeled as a grouping of other EA concepts, including:

People

Organizational units

Functions

Processes

Business services

Information and data

Application services

Applications

Infrastructure services

Infrastructure

In this way, business capability can be seen as a cross‑cutting element of typical enterprise‑architecture models.

Business capabilities manage units of strategic change and authorize programs and project portfolios. Projects then develop solutions that either create new business functions or update existing ones through functional increments.

Thus, business functions and functional increments form the basis for developing an EA roadmap.

Business Capability Model

Figure 1: Example business‑capability model (source: UK Government Reference Architecture v1.0). The diagram shows a static view in the IBM Component Business Model style, where each cell represents a business function.

The columns usually reflect high‑level value chains or major groupings of capabilities meaningful to the business, while the rows reflect basic uses of capabilities, typically three rows: Guidance (Strategy), Control (Management), and Execution (Operation). The rows correspond to the Viable System Model (VSM) system types (System 5/4, System 3/3*/2, System 1).

Business capabilities also have dependency relationships; one capability must exist before another can be implemented.

Implementing a business strategy requires new or changed capabilities, but most often only aspects of existing capabilities are altered—this is a capability increment.

Figure 2: Business function source diagram (TOGAF). It shows the relationship between business capabilities and capability increments, linking them to EA development phases and work‑package definitions in program and project portfolios.

Each capability is broken down into one or more capability increments, which are realized at different points in time and across different transition architectures. Each increment represents a change unit.

Capability increments also have dependencies; one increment must be completed before another can be started.

Figure 3: Capability dependency model, illustrating dependencies among business capabilities and among capability increments.

These dependencies can be reordered to show the required sequence of application, forming the basis of an EA roadmap.

Figure 4: EA roadmap structure. Multiple tracks (e.g., strategic, business, IT) can be represented, allowing parallel implementation of capability increments.

Capability increments are grouped into transition architectures, which are intermediate models between the current (as‑is) and target (to‑be) enterprise‑architecture states. A set of one or more capability increments provides the mandatory requirements for solutions or services developed in projects.

The business‑capability model should be the core of all EA models, serving as a strategic view that helps all stakeholders understand what needs to be done and what must change.