Business Function: Does it still belong in Business Architecture?

By Chris Aitken |Technology strategy, issues and trends

Capability modelling has become something of a de facto standard within contemporary Enterprise Architecture practice. Capability-based planning is also a proven tool when it comes to change portfolio management and the development of strategic roadmaps. However, I wonder if we architects aren’t guilty at times of being overzealous in our readiness to label anything that a business does or needs as a ‘business capability’, resulting in capability models that are in reality a mixture of capabilities, services, business functions and processes? Although the concept ‘business function’ might be considered ‘old school’ and only ‘reinforcing siloed architectures’, it becomes crucially important when we want to describe how an enterprise needs to organise itself in order to operate a given business model. Moreover, the term ‘function’ is highly overloaded, meaning different things to different people in different contexts adding to confusion with similar ideas and a lack of precision in its use.

Full Article: Business Function: Does it still belong in Business Architecture?