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Towards Data-Driven Capability Interface
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Towards Data-Driven Capability Interface Towards Data-Driven Capability Interface Towards Data-Driven Capability Interface Towards Data-Driven Capability Interface Jelena Zdravkovic, Janis Stirna
Jelena Zdravkovic, Janis Stirna Jelena Zdravkovic, Janis Stirna Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University Jelena Zdravkovic, Janis Stirna Department Postbox of Computer Sciences, 7003,and 164Systems 07 Kista, SwedenStockholm (e-mail: University Department Postbox of Computer and Systems Sciences, 7003,and 164Systems 07 Kista, SwedenStockholm (e-mail: University [email protected], [email protected]) Department Postbox of Computer Sciences, Stockholm 7003, 164 07 Kista, Sweden (e-mail: University [email protected], [email protected]) Postbox 7003, 164 07 Kista, Sweden (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]) [email protected], [email protected]) Abstract: In computing, interface is the notion used for exposing the business logic of a software component Abstract: In computing, interfaceofis athecomponent notion usedisfor exposing the business logic offrom a software component for consumption. The interface deliberately defined separately the component’s Abstract: In computing, interfaceofis athecomponent notion usedisfor exposing the business logic of a software component for consumption. The interface deliberately defined separately from the component’s implementation toThe define entry of points, and atused theisfor same time prevent access to the internal Abstract: In computing, interface is athecomponent notion exposing the business logic offrom acomponent’s software component for consumption. interface deliberately defined separately the component’s implementation toThe define entry points, and atreplacing theis same time prevent access to the component’s internal resources and logic. Another advantage is that the implementation of one component with another for consumption. interface of a component deliberately defined separately from the component’s implementation to define entry points, isand the same time prevent access to the component’s internal and logic. Another advantage thatat replacing resources the implementation of one component with another that has a same interface enables continuous consumption because how a component internally meets the implementation to define entry points, and at the same time prevent access to the component’s internal resources and logic. Another advantage is that replacing the implementation of one component with another that has a and same interface enables continuous consumption because how a investigates component internally meets the requirements of the interface is irrelevant to its consumer. This paper the possibilities to resources logic. Another advantage is that replacing the implementation of one component with another that has a same interface enables consumption because how a component internally meets the is continuous irrelevant requirements the interface toconsumption its consumer. This how paperaCapability investigates the possibilities to introduce the of notion of interface in capability-oriented ISbecause engineering. Development that has a same interface enables continuous componentDriven internally meets the requirements of the interface is irrelevant to its consumer. This paper investigates the possibilities to introduce theexample notion of in capability-oriented IS engineering. Development (CDD) is an of ainterface methodological approach for configuring context Driven aware, re-deployable requirements of the interface is irrelevant to its consumer. This dynamic, paper Capability investigates the possibilities to introduce theexample notion of interface in capability-oriented IS engineering. Capability Driven Development (CDD) is an of a methodological approach for configuring dynamic, context aware, re-deployable business capabilities on top of existing enterprise information systems to enable continuous delivery of introduce the notion of interface in capability-oriented IS engineering. Capability Driven Development (CDD) is capabilities an example on of atop methodological approach information for configuring dynamic, context aware, re-deployable business of contexts. existing enterprise systems enable continuous delivery of businessisfor CDD reliesinformation onconfiguring capability as the to central component integrates (CDD) an varying examplesituational of atop methodological approach for dynamic, context aware, that re-deployable business capabilities on of existing enterprise systems to enable continuous delivery of business for varying situational contexts. CDD relies on capability as the central component that integrates other elements of organizational design such as relies goals, KPIs, context processes, resources, and business capabilities on top of contexts. existing enterprise information systems enable continuous of business for varying situational CDD on capability asinformation, the to central component thatdelivery integrates other elements of organizational design such as relies goals, KPIs, contextasinformation, processes, resources, and software services. These elements produce and use lot of different data, internal as well as external. In business for varying situational contexts. CDD on capability the central component that integrates other elements of organizational design such as goals, KPIs, context information, processes, as resources, and services. external. software These elements produce and use most lot ofofdifferent data, internal as well In order to facilitate the uptake and use of capabilities, the necessary data should be made available other elements of organizational design such as goals, KPIs, context information, processes, resources, and software services.the These elements produce and use lot of different data, internal as well as external. In uptake order facilitate and useproduce of capabilities, most the data should beon made available for theto use by the the consumers of the this wenecessary provide initial view the data software services. These elements andInuse lotstudy, ofof data, an internal as well ashow external. In order to facilitate uptake and usecapability. of capabilities, most ofdifferent the necessary data should be made available the how the data for use by the consumers of the capability. In this study, we provide an initial view on interface of the capability component should be defined. The proposal is illustrated on the service order touse facilitate the uptake and usecapability. of capabilities, most of the necessary data should beon made available for the by the consumers of the In this study, we provide an initial view how the data interface component should bethis defined. The proposalan isinitial illustrated onhow the service concerning a the regional roads maintenance. Copyright © study, 2019 IFAC for the useof thecapability consumers of the capability. In we provide view on data interface ofby the capability component should be defined. The proposal is illustrated on the the service concerning a regional roads maintenance. Copyright © 2019 IFAC interface of the capability component should be defined. The proposal is illustrated on the service concerning a regional roads maintenance. Copyright © 2019 IFAC representations, © 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Enterprise modeling, Information systems, Conceptual Computer interfaces, concerning a regional roads maintenance. Copyright © 2019 IFAC Keywords: Enterprise modeling, Information systems, Conceptual representations, Computer interfaces, Data models Keywords: Enterprise modeling, Information systems, Conceptual representations, Computer interfaces, Data modelsEnterprise modeling, Information systems, Conceptual representations, Computer interfaces, Keywords: Data models Data models of context-dependent organizational solutions and supporting 1. INTRODUCTION of context-dependent organizational and supporting IT applications. Hence, the use ofsolutions the capability notion 1. INTRODUCTION of context-dependent organizational solutions and supporting IT applications. Hence, the use of the capability notion 1. INTRODUCTION contributes to three key motivations: of context-dependent organizational solutions and supporting The notion of capability originates from competence-based IT applications. Hence, the use of the capability notion 1. INTRODUCTION contributes to three key motivations: The notion of and capability originates fromArchitecture competence-based applications. the use of the capability notion management military Enterprise (EA) IT contributes threeHence, key The notion of capability originates from competence-based (a) In the to context of motivations: business planning, it is becoming management and military Enterprise Architecture (EA) contributes to three key motivations: frameworks. has military been originates further incorporated in Enterprise The notion ofItand capability fromArchitecture competence-based In the context of business planning, it is becoming management Enterprise (EA) (a) recognized a fundamental component to describe what a frameworks. Itand has been further incorporated inrepresenting Enterprise (a) In the as context of business planning, it is becoming Modeling (EM) approaches for the purpose of management military Enterprise Architecture (EA) recognized as a fundamental component to describe what a frameworks. It has been further incorporated inrepresenting Enterprise (a) core business does and, in particular, its ability of delivering In the context of business planning, it is becoming Modeling (EM) approaches for the purpose of as a fundamental component to describe what a organizational fromfurther a for result-based perspective. Thus it recognized frameworks. Itdesigns has been incorporated inrepresenting Enterprise core business does and, in particular, its ability of delivering Modeling (EM) approaches the purpose of value that is relevant businessitsstrategy anda as does a fundamental component to describe what organizational designs from result-based perspective. Thus it recognized core business and,toin the particular, ability of(Ulrich delivering is an abstraction beyond theaa specifics of the more traditional Modeling (EM) approaches for the purpose of representing that is does relevant toin the businessitsstrategy (Ulrich and organizational designs from result-based perspective. Thus it value Rosen, 2011); core business and, particular, ability of delivering is an abstraction beyond the specifics of the more traditional that is relevant to the business strategy (Ulrich and perspectives ofdesigns EM, such asa specifics how (processes), whotraditional (agents), organizational from result-based perspective. Thus it value Rosen, 2011); is an abstraction beyond the of the more value that is relevant to the business strategy (Ulrich and perspectives of EM, as how (processes), whotraditional (agents), Rosen, what (concepts), andsuch why (goals). Capability offers a more (b) is an abstraction beyond the specifics of the more In IS2011); development, it makes IS designs more accessible to perspectives of EM, such as how (processes), who (agents), Rosen, 2011); what (concepts), and why (goals). Capability offers a more (b) In IS it makes IS designs accessible to direct focus on It also allows focusing onoffers the aspect of business development, perspectives of results. EM, as how (processes), who (agents), stakeholders by enabling them to more use the capability what (concepts), andsuch why (goals). Capability a more (b) In IS development, it makes IS designs more accessible to direct focus on results. It also allows focusing on the aspect of business stakeholders by enabling them to use the capability sustainability, ensuring that the Capability results areonoffers delivered and what (concepts), and why (goals). a more notion to development, describe theirby (Stirna et al., 2012); In IS itrequirements makes IS designs more accessible to direct focus oni.e. results. It also allows focusing the aspect of (b) business stakeholders enabling them to use the capability sustainability, i.e. ensuring that the results areondelivered and notion to stakeholders describe theirby requirements (Stirna et al., 2012); benefits attained even if the initial or envisioned business direct focus on results. It also allows focusing the aspect of business enabling them to use the capability sustainability, i.e. ensuring that the results are delivered and notion to describe their requirements (Stirna et al., 2012); benefits attained ifscenario the or envisioned business It supports thetheir configurability operations a higher situation or application In delivered practice, this (c) sustainability, i.e. even ensuring thatinitial thechanges. results are and notion to describe requirementsof(Stirna et al.,on 2012); benefits attained even ifscenario the initial or envisioned business (c) It supports the configurability of operations on a higher situation or application changes. In practice, this level than services, business process, resources, and requires business capabilities to be adjusted according to the benefits attained even ifscenario the initial or envisioned business (c) It supports the configurability of operations on a higher situation or application changes. In practice, this level than services, business process, resources, and requires business capabilities to be adjusted according to the technology solutions (Zdravkovic et al., 2017). (c) It supports the configurability of operations on a higher context in which they will be delivered. situation or application scenario changes. In practice, this than services, business process, resources, and requires business capabilities to be adjusted according to the level technology solutions (Zdravkovic et al., 2017). context in which they will be delivered. than solutions services, business etprocess, resources, and requires capabilities to be adjusted according to the level technology al., 2017). context inbusiness which they will be delivered. form the (Zdravkovic functional portfolio of an organisation or Currently, the notion capability has a growing presence in Capabilities technology solutions (Zdravkovic et al., 2017). context in which they of will be delivered. the functional portfolio of an organisation or Currently, theand notion of capability a growing system presence in Capabilities of a group form of organisations collaborating in a business the business IT alignment andhas information form the functional portfolio of an organisation or Currently, the notion of capability has a growing presence(IS) in Capabilities of a group of organisations collaborating in a business the business and IT alignment and information system (IS) ecosystem the portfolio core functional of ora form the functional of an organisation development frameworks starting from moresystem businessCurrently, theand notion of capability a growing presence in Capabilities of a groupby ofrepresenting organisations collaborating in blocks a business the business IT alignment andhas information (IS) ecosystem by representing the core functional blocks of a development frameworks starting from more businessSuch capability portfolio often called aa capability of a group organisations in blocks business oriented such asIT Business Architecture andsystem Business the business and alignment and information (IS) business. ecosystem byofaarepresenting the collaborating coreis functional of a development frameworks starting from more businessbusiness. Such capability portfolio is often called a capability oriented such as the Business Architecture and businessBusiness map. Capability also allowsportfolio separating the desired results form by arepresenting the coreis often functional of a Modeling, towards alignment-oriented represented by ecosystem development frameworks starting from more business. Such capability calledblocks a capability oriented such as Business Architecture and Business map. Capability also allows separating thecapabilities, desired results form Modeling, towards the alignment-oriented represented by the means of delivering it. For example, such as business. Such a capability portfolio is often called a capability Enterprise Architecture (EA), and EM. From the Business business oriented as the Business Architecture and Capability also allows separating the desired results form Modeling,such towards alignment-oriented represented by map. the means of delivering it.“Energy For example, capabilities, such as Enterprise Architecture (EA), andwhat EM.theFrom the does business “Claim Management”, or Consumption Control” are map. Capability also allows separating the desired results form perspective, a capability describes business that Modeling, towards the alignment-oriented represented by the means of delivering it. For example, capabilities, such as Enterprise Architecture (EA), andwhat EM.theFrom the does business “Claim Management”, or “Energy Consumption Control” are perspective, a capability describes business that essential toof andelivering organization but they can be offered by such various means For example, capabilities, as creates value for customers et al., It the Enterprise Architecture (EA), (Zdravkovic andwhat EM.theFrom the 2017). business “Claim Management”, orit.“Energy Consumption Control” are perspective, a capability describes business does that toinan organization but they can be offered by various creates value for customers (Zdravkovic et al., including 2017). It essential providers different ways. They can be used in organisations “Claim Management”, or “Energy Consumption Control” are represents a design from a result-based perspective perspective, a capability describes what the business does that to an organization but they can be offered by various creates value for customers (Zdravkovic et al., 2017). It essential providers different ways. but They cancan be used inecosystems. organisations represents a design from a result-based perspective in groups oforganization organizations forming business essential toin they be offered by various various dimensions including organization’s goals, creates value for customers (Zdravkovic et values, al., including 2017). It or providers inan different ways. They can be used in organisations represents a design from a result-based perspective including or in groups of organizations forming business ecosystems. various dimensions including organization’s values, goals, providers in different ways. They can be used in organisations processes, services, people, and resources. In IS engineering represents a design from a result-based perspective including various dimensions including organization’s values, goals, or in groups of organizations forming business ecosystems. processes, services, people, and resources. In IS engineering capability has emerged as the means to support development various dimensions including organization’s values, goals, or in groups of organizations forming business ecosystems. processes, services, people, and resources. In IS engineering capability has emerged as the means to support development processes, services, people, and resources. In IS engineering capability has emerged as the means to support development capability© emerged as the means to support development 2405-8963 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Copyright ©has 2019 IFAC 1143Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Peer review©under of International Federation of Automatic Copyright 2019 responsibility IFAC 1143Control. Copyright © 2019 IFAC 1143 10.1016/j.ifacol.2019.11.347 Copyright © 2019 IFAC 1143
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In this regard, a challenge emerges when one business entity uses a capability that is developed by another business entity. In such cases the using organization might not be aware of the details of capability’s design and implementation. Interface is a common notion used in system development to leverage between internal and external aspects of system components; it has been long established in object-oriented, component, and service design as the means to define entry points for them, at the same time preventing access to the internal logic. Interfaces are seen as means of enabling reusability. The goal of this study is to propose the principle of the interface for the concept of capability. The overall aim of this research is to support automated management of business capabilities by underlying IS structures, and hence we have chosen to demonstrate our proposal by using the Capability Driven Development (CDD) framework (Berzisa et al., 2015). The motivation for choosing CDD as it has a defined capability meta-model, a capability design methodology, as we all as it has been applied in a number of cases. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives background to capability and how it is used for representing business functions; this is followed by a presentation of the CDD modelling framework. Section 3 presents the proposal for the interface for capability in a model-oriented development environment, such as CDD. Section 4 elaborates the theoretical proposal on a business case concerning regional road maintenance. A discussion and concluding remarks are presented in sections 5 and 6. 2. BACKGROUND 2.1 Capability and Capability Maps Capability is used in a variety of organisational modelling approaches and frameworks. For example, OMG’s proposal for Business Architecture (BA) (OMG, 2017), uses business capability for describing what a business does - specifically, it is an ability or capacity that the business may possess or exchange to achieve certain outcome. The Value Delivery Modeling Language (VDML) (OMG, 2009), defines a modeling language for analysis and design of the business operations of an enterprise with a focus on the creation and exchange of value. Its aim is to provide an abstraction of the operations appropriate for business planners. VDML links strategy and business models to the activities, roles, and capabilities that run the enterprise. Capability is also a key concept of EA frameworks. E.g., Department of Defence Architecture Framework (DODAF) (US Department of Defence, 2009), defines capability as “the ability to achieve a desired effect under specified (performance) standards and conditions through combinations of ways and means (activities and resources) to perform a set of activities”. Condition means the state of an environment or situation in which a performer performs; desired effect means desired state of a resource; resource means data, information, performers, materiel, or personnel types that are produced or consumed. The NATO Architecture Framework (NAF), (UK Ministry of Defence, 2013) defines capability as “the ability of
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one or more resources to deliver a specified type of effect or a specified course of action”. The NAF meta-model defines the following key relationships of capability: capabilities may be specialized into more specific capabilities, composed of several capabilities, as well as dependent on other capabilities. Capability when applied is associated with measurable categories. Capability elaborated into Capability configuration package, which is used to configure resources for capability implementation. In TOGAF (The Open Group, 2011) the concept of capability is modeled as a function element type in the Business Architecture domain, which in addition defines strategy, governance, organization, and key business processes. In ArchiMate (The Open Group, 2016), capability is modeled as a strategy element type that realizes a course of action using assigned resources. In summary, the current use of capability is concerned with organization’s ability for delivering a business function. The “integrational” nature of capability is used to bind the strategic/intentional part of the organizational design with the operational or technical parts. Hence, capability should be seen as a key concept relevant to both strategic planners as well as operational planners. Capabilities are representing the basic building blocks of a business and hence a common practice is to collect capabilities into a capability map. The capability map of an organization represents a complete view of what that business does. The capability map links two complex environments - business architecture and IT architecture and, hence, it provides the foundation for the alignment between them. Capability maps can be hierarchical i.e. they include several levels of capabilities, where each level is a decomposition of one or more capabilities at a higher level (Fig. 1). At the highest level, capabilities are typically depicted according to different categories, such as strategic, core, and supporting. At the lowest level, business capabilities are related with the IT applications supporting them, where several applications can be mapped to a certain business capability and an application can be used to support several capabilities.
Fig. 1 A Capability map, showing the examples of levels 1 and 2 capabilities. A business capability is related to the business goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), as well as to the context within which it exists. An organisation, especially in the situations where it collaborates with others to deliver value, needs to
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have a conceptually clear view of what might constitute a capability. This motivates the need for a capability collaboration concept in order to be able to express the possible relations among the different business capabilities within a capability map of the organisation, or even outside of it. In the case of external collaboration, there is a need to distinguish between internal capabilities and external capabilities provided by other organizations. The details of external capabilities owned by other organizations may not be important to know, or, indeed as will probably be the most common case, may never be known, since such capability designs are considered as competitive advantage to their owners. If several organizations are involved in a business ecosystem aimed to provide the value to its customers in an integrated way then the capability map belongs to the ecosystem as a whole. In this case the contributing capabilities are distributed among the partners and it is important to specify capability owners. Even in this constellation, the details of partner’s capabilities are not needed to know – the essential need is to connect to each other’s capabilities to streamline unified business services.
It is a methodology developed to facilitate continuous delivery of business capabilities in changing business conditions (context) by support of IS infrastructure. The CDD approach has developed an integrated methodology consisting of a metamodel (see Fig. 2) and guidelines for the way of working. The figure distinguishes – the main design part (in white) including goal/KPI, process and context modelling, variability modeling for supporting different contexts (in yellow), as well adjustment algorithms for swapping capabilities at the runtime based on changes in the surrounding business context and / OR KPI values (in orange). The main concepts of the meta-model relevant to this study are described in Table 1 Table 1. Main concepts of the CDD meta-model. Concept Capability
KPI
2.2 Capability Driven Development One methodological approach for dealing with business capabilities implemented by the means of software system is Capability Driven Development (CDD) (Berzisa et al, 2015).
Context Set Context Element Range Context Element Measurable Property Context Element Value Goal
Process
Fig. 2. CDD meta-model (Sandkuhl and Stirna, 2018).
Description Capability is the ability and capacity that enable an enterprise to achieve a business Goal in a certain context (represented by Context Set). Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable properties that can be seen as targets for achievement of Goals. Context Set describes the set of Context Elements that are relevant for design and delivery of a specific Capability. Context Element Range specifies boundaries of permitted values for a specific Context Element and for a specific Context Set. A Context Element is representing any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. Measurable Property is any information about the organization’s environment that can be measured. Context Element Value is a value of a specific Context Element at a given the runtime situation. It can be calculated from several Measurable Properties. Goal is a desired state of affairs that needs to be attained. Goals can be refined into subgoals forming a goal model. Goals should typically be expressed in measurable terms such as KPIs. Process is series of actions that are performed in order to achieve particular result. A Process supports Goals and has input and produces output in terms of information and/or material. When initiated a process is perceived to consume resources.
In service-centred organizations, the Process element as depicted in Fig.2 and described in Table 2 could be replaced by the notion of Service; or Service could be placed between Capability and Process, depicting the interface towards consumers, enabled by Capability which includes one or more Process elements.
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Fig. 3 illustrates the capability for service promotion at a municipality elicited to realize a goal with a related KPI, and linked to a context set consisting of three context elements, namely, municipality population, season, and weather. This capability fulfils goal “to be able to promote online services”. This goal is measured by KPI “percentage of online services used”.
Fig. 3. A capability linked to business goals and context. The meta-model is implemented in a technical environment to enable the support for the methodology by consisting of the following key components (see Fig.4).
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3. DEFINITION FOR CAPABILITY INTERFACE Organisations may be concerned with several approaches when planning and designing their business capabilities. The first is internal and often top-down oriented, where an organisation sets the effort to plot its functional portfolio in the form of a capability map like explained in section 2.1. The organisation then make tactical decisions if all capabilities will be internal (see section 2.1), or some will be taken from external providers. Another approach may be applied when several organisations collaborate in an ecosystem; then the specific capabilities of the overall business functionality of the ecosystem are distributed as they are designed, managed and provided by different partners, where those partners often change over time. A common logic of these approaches is that the capabilities, when used by with others, could reveal only the aspects needed for their consumers (byers or partners), while keeping the inner working and designs hidden. Interface is a notion used in system development to leverage between internal and external aspects of system components, as we explained earlier in this study. For business processes, interfaces are typically publicized as the message protocols of process activities (Zdravkovic and Johanesson, 2004). For capabilities, this means that the models of goals, processes resources, and adjustment rules are for the internal use (see Fig. 2), because they concern strategy and functionality of the capability provider, and hence, can be encapsulated. What needs to be publicized to others is the business context and the key performance indicators (KPIs), the capability is designed to support by its functionality. Both these parts of capability, context and KPIs, represent only data. Hence, the interface that they model for capability is data-oriented. Fig. 5 illustrates the suggested interface, and Table 2 summarizes the interface parts and elements. We have adapted the “lollipop” and socket symbols used in UML to model capability interfaces.
Fig. 4. Overview of the CDD technical architecture. Capability Design Tool (CDT) is a graphical modelling tool for supporting the design of capability elements. Capability Navigation Application (CNA) is an application that makes use of the models (capability designs) created in the CDT to monitor the capability context by receiving the values of measurable property (MP in Fig. 3) and handle run-time capability adjustments. Capability Context Platform (CCP) is a component for distributing context data to the CNA. Capability Delivery Application (CDA) represents existing software solutions of the organization, i.e. the business applications that are used to support the delivery of organization’s capabilities. This can be a custom-made system, or a configured standard system such as SAP ERP. The CNA communicates, or configures the CDA to adjust for changing data contexts during capability design and delivery. Monitoring of defined KPIs facilitate capability refinement and pattern updating.
Fig. 5. Capability with its 2 lollipops (KPI and Context) and contained elements. Once the capability is designed and its interface is specified, it can be used in different situations: 1.
A company follows a capability-oriented design and it wants to offer its capabilities to other companies, while not revealing the internal design of those capabilities; thus, when the company offers a capability, such as “Low Risk Management”, its interface describes the supported KPIs and the business context in which the capability is valid.
2.
A company follows a capability design, but in its capability map some of the capabilities are not feasible in the company. Hence the company is using an external
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capability provider for a missing capability (such as in 1), if the provider supports company’s KPIs and Context defined for that capability. The company may choose to replace an existing provider with another capability provider, if, for example, KPIs drop, or Context changes. 3.
initially presented in (Zdravkovic et al., 2018). It is envisioned as an ecosystem model as shown in Fig. 6.
In a business ecosystem, the partners collaborate in terms of capabilities. Each partner offering a capability to another partner, describes it, as well as it publishes its interface to “inform” of its performance (KPI) and validity scope (Context). Table 2: Description of capability interface elements. Part
Element
Content
KPI
KPI
Each defined KPI for the goal(s) that are realized by the capability, is an element in this set; the set thus defines required measurable targets for achievement of the capability; at the runtime KPI values are measured to determine if the capability is providing expected performance.
Context
ContextSet: ContextElement
Context Element represents an aspect or entity in the business environment, which influences the capability; at the runtime Context Element values are measured to determine if it is in the allowed range for the designed capability.
ContextSet: ContextElementRange
Context Element Range is optional; if set, it specifies the boundaries of permitted values for a specific Context Element of the capability.
Fig. 6. Capability constellation for the Smart Traffic Management. The vision of an intelligent transport management system aims at having proactive road maintenance based on weather data, traffic, as well as road conditions, which is especially relevant to consider in winter road conditions. In order to achieve this vision, the Latvian State Roads (LSR) has to offer the capability “Smart Traffic Management”, for which it needs to engage three capability suppliers, namely, Meteorology Centre for “Environment Monitoring”, a crowdsourced navigation service provider for “Routing”, as well as Latvian Autoroad Maintainer (LAM) for the capability of “Road Maintenance”. Because Latvian Autoroad Maintainer has limited resources in terms of snow ploughing trucks, it needs to subcontract parts of regional road maintenance from several road maintenance companies, each of them offering “Road Maintenance” capabilities. The regional road maintenance companies offer capabilities that are very similar to the one that the LAM has. Hence we can assume that the same capability design can be reused.
In the next section we illustrate the use of the proposed capability interface for the outlined situation 3. 4. EXAMPLE CASE The proposal for capability interfaces is illustrated by an example of Intelligent Transportation Systems in Latvia
This example assumes that the capabilities of the various actors are loosely coupled and that any capability-consumer actor cannot influence the internal designs of the capabilities of the suppliers. E.g. the Latvian State Roads has a capability that depends on environment monitoring and routing capabilities, and in essence, it is only using their services without being able to directly influence what data is offered and in which format and frequency, e.g. the weather forecast is made every two hours. The capability of Smart Traffic Management includes management of dynamic traffic signs and traffic lights adjustments depending on traffic conditions. This capability uses context elements of driving conditions and driving speed limit, both of which are published as open data
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for use by other actors. Smart Traffic Management capability also requires road maintenance capability from LAM. The capability interfaces allow easier and more efficient identification of capabilities offered by suppliers. E.g. in case of KPI “number of roads with poor driving conditions” exceeding certain margin beyond which the LAM would not be able to cope efficiently, the LSR would need to look for other actors (e.g. other governmental organizations, private companies, or help from abroad) that can deliver similar capability. Considering KPIs and context elements of those capabilities would make the process of capability aggregation more efficient. Naturally, it might happen that the potential suppliers are not capability-enabled. In this case, the capability consumer should first model the capability of interest with a particular focus on what KPIs and context elements can be discovered and measured (often based on open data such as traffic cameras or road conditions). For the purpose of selecting a capability and integrating it with other capabilities, specifying only capability interfaces should be sufficient. 5. CONCLUDING REMARKS This paper proposes the concept and a notation for capability interface that separates the internal design of a capability from aspects that are of interest for external capability users in order to select and incorporate a capability in their capability design. To this end the proposed capability interface exposes KPIs and context elements including their ranges for which the capability is relevant. Capability interfaces support combining business capabilities from smaller (sub) capabilities offered by capability suppliers thus supporting creation of a capabilityenabled business ecosystem. Such an ecosystem would be more sustainable because its actors would not need to be obliged to expose their internal designs in order to participate in business offerings. In this regard, we have outlined three usage scenarios for capability-enabled collaboration. This approach would also facilitate capability reuse, i.e. if a company wants to adapt existing capability designs, it can first consider the available capability based on the information provided in the interface and on the basis of this information chose to analyse the rest of the capability design. The proposal contributes to organisations’ digital transformations and their digital business maturity as it describes a digital solution for connecting the capabilities of a single organisation, or of several organisations participating in a business ecosystem. In terms of issues for future work, the following tasks are identified: (1) the proposal of the capability interface needs to be further refined and validated with a large case of capability management involving several organizations; (2) the capability interface needs to be elaborated in the tool support for capability design; (3) since the current proposal only addresses capability design, additional investigation of the use of capability interfaces at run-time is needed.
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REFERENCES Berziša, S., Bravos, G., Gonzalez, T.C., Czubayko, U., España, S., Grabis, J., Henkel, M., Jokste, L., Kampars, J., Koç, H., Kuhr, J.-C., Llorca, C., Loucopoulos, P., Pascual, R.J., Pastor, O., Sandkuhl, K., Simic, H., Stirna, J., Valverde, F.G., Zdravkovic, J. (2015). Capability Driven Development: An Approach to Designing Digital Enterprises. Springer Journal Business & Inforamtion Systems Engineering, Volume 57, Issue 1, pp. 15–25. OMG Business Architecture Special Interest Group & Guild. (2017). A Guide to Business Architecture of Body Knowledge (BIZBOK) 5.5 (available to members). http://www.businessarchitectureguild.org/?page=BIZ OMG. (2013). Value Delivery Metamodel™ (VDML™) Version 1.0 http://www.omg.org/spec/VDML/1.0/ Sandkuhl K., Stirna J. (eds) (2018). Capability Management in Digital Enterprises. Springer ISBN 978-3-319-90423-8 Stirna, J., Grabis, J., Henkel, M., and Zdravkovic, J. (2012). Capability Driven Development – an Approach to Support Evolving Organizations. In: proc. of IFIP WG8.1 Working Conference on the Practice of Enterprise Modeling (PoEM), Springer LNBIP, pp 117-131 The Open Group. (2011). TOGAF Version 9.1, an Open Group Standard. http://pubs.opengroup.org/archi-tecture/togaf9doc/arch/index.html The Open Group´. (2016). ArchiMate 3.0 Specification. http://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/jsp/publications/Publi cationDetails.jsp?catalogno=I162 UK Ministry of Defence. (2013). Proposed NAF v4 MetaModel (MODEM). NATO Architecture Framework v4.0 Documentation, http://nafdocs.org/modem Ulrich, W. and Rosen, M. (2011). The Business Capability Map: Building a Foundation for Business/IT Alignment. Cutter Consortium for Business and Enterprise http://www.cutter.com/content-andArchitecture. analysis/resource-centers/enterprise-architecture/sampleour-research/ea110504.html US Department of Defense. (2009). DoDAF Architecture Framework Version 2.02 http://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/DODAF/DoDAF_v2-02_web.pdf Zdravkovic, J., Johanesson, P. (2004). Cooperation of Processes through Message Level Agreement. In: proc. of 16th Int. Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2004). Springer LNCS, Volume 3084, pp 564-579 Zdravkovic, J., Stirna, J., Grabis, J. (2017). A Comparative Analysis of Using the Capability Notion for Congruent Business and Information Systems Engineering. Journal Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly, CSIMQ, no. 10, pp 1–20, https://doi.org/10.7250/csimq .2017-10.01 Zdravkovic J., Kampars J., Stirna J. (2018). Using Open Data to Support Organizational Capabilities in Dynamic Business Contexts. In: Matulevičius R., Dijkman R. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering Workshops, CAiSE 2018. Springer LNBIP, Volume 316, pp 28-39
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Towards Data-Driven Capability Interface Towards Data-Driven Capability Interface Towards Data-Driven Capability Interface Towards Data-Driven Capability Interface Jelena Zdravkovic, Janis Stirna
Jelena Zdravkovic, Janis Stirna Jelena Zdravkovic, Janis Stirna Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University Jelena Zdravkovic, Janis Stirna Department Postbox of Computer Sciences, 7003,and 164Systems 07 Kista, SwedenStockholm (e-mail: University Department Postbox of Computer and Systems Sciences, 7003,and 164Systems 07 Kista, SwedenStockholm (e-mail: University [email protected], [email protected]) Department Postbox of Computer Sciences, Stockholm 7003, 164 07 Kista, Sweden (e-mail: University [email protected], [email protected]) Postbox 7003, 164 07 Kista, Sweden (e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]) [email protected], [email protected]) Abstract: In computing, interface is the notion used for exposing the business logic of a software component Abstract: In computing, interfaceofis athecomponent notion usedisfor exposing the business logic offrom a software component for consumption. The interface deliberately defined separately the component’s Abstract: In computing, interfaceofis athecomponent notion usedisfor exposing the business logic of a software component for consumption. The interface deliberately defined separately from the component’s implementation toThe define entry of points, and atused theisfor same time prevent access to the internal Abstract: In computing, interface is athecomponent notion exposing the business logic offrom acomponent’s software component for consumption. interface deliberately defined separately the component’s implementation toThe define entry points, and atreplacing theis same time prevent access to the component’s internal resources and logic. Another advantage is that the implementation of one component with another for consumption. interface of a component deliberately defined separately from the component’s implementation to define entry points, isand the same time prevent access to the component’s internal and logic. Another advantage thatat replacing resources the implementation of one component with another that has a same interface enables continuous consumption because how a component internally meets the implementation to define entry points, and at the same time prevent access to the component’s internal resources and logic. Another advantage is that replacing the implementation of one component with another that has a and same interface enables continuous consumption because how a investigates component internally meets the requirements of the interface is irrelevant to its consumer. This paper the possibilities to resources logic. Another advantage is that replacing the implementation of one component with another that has a same interface enables consumption because how a component internally meets the is continuous irrelevant requirements the interface toconsumption its consumer. This how paperaCapability investigates the possibilities to introduce the of notion of interface in capability-oriented ISbecause engineering. Development that has a same interface enables continuous componentDriven internally meets the requirements of the interface is irrelevant to its consumer. This paper investigates the possibilities to introduce theexample notion of in capability-oriented IS engineering. Development (CDD) is an of ainterface methodological approach for configuring context Driven aware, re-deployable requirements of the interface is irrelevant to its consumer. This dynamic, paper Capability investigates the possibilities to introduce theexample notion of interface in capability-oriented IS engineering. Capability Driven Development (CDD) is an of a methodological approach for configuring dynamic, context aware, re-deployable business capabilities on top of existing enterprise information systems to enable continuous delivery of introduce the notion of interface in capability-oriented IS engineering. Capability Driven Development (CDD) is capabilities an example on of atop methodological approach information for configuring dynamic, context aware, re-deployable business of contexts. existing enterprise systems enable continuous delivery of businessisfor CDD reliesinformation onconfiguring capability as the to central component integrates (CDD) an varying examplesituational of atop methodological approach for dynamic, context aware, that re-deployable business capabilities on of existing enterprise systems to enable continuous delivery of business for varying situational contexts. CDD relies on capability as the central component that integrates other elements of organizational design such as relies goals, KPIs, context processes, resources, and business capabilities on top of contexts. existing enterprise information systems enable continuous of business for varying situational CDD on capability asinformation, the to central component thatdelivery integrates other elements of organizational design such as relies goals, KPIs, contextasinformation, processes, resources, and software services. These elements produce and use lot of different data, internal as well as external. In business for varying situational contexts. CDD on capability the central component that integrates other elements of organizational design such as goals, KPIs, context information, processes, as resources, and services. external. software These elements produce and use most lot ofofdifferent data, internal as well In order to facilitate the uptake and use of capabilities, the necessary data should be made available other elements of organizational design such as goals, KPIs, context information, processes, resources, and software services.the These elements produce and use lot of different data, internal as well as external. In uptake order facilitate and useproduce of capabilities, most the data should beon made available for theto use by the the consumers of the this wenecessary provide initial view the data software services. These elements andInuse lotstudy, ofof data, an internal as well ashow external. In order to facilitate uptake and usecapability. of capabilities, most ofdifferent the necessary data should be made available the how the data for use by the consumers of the capability. In this study, we provide an initial view on interface of the capability component should be defined. The proposal is illustrated on the service order touse facilitate the uptake and usecapability. of capabilities, most of the necessary data should beon made available for the by the consumers of the In this study, we provide an initial view how the data interface component should bethis defined. The proposalan isinitial illustrated onhow the service concerning a the regional roads maintenance. Copyright © study, 2019 IFAC for the useof thecapability consumers of the capability. In we provide view on data interface ofby the capability component should be defined. The proposal is illustrated on the the service concerning a regional roads maintenance. Copyright © 2019 IFAC interface of the capability component should be defined. The proposal is illustrated on the service concerning a regional roads maintenance. Copyright © 2019 IFAC representations, © 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Enterprise modeling, Information systems, Conceptual Computer interfaces, concerning a regional roads maintenance. Copyright © 2019 IFAC Keywords: Enterprise modeling, Information systems, Conceptual representations, Computer interfaces, Data models Keywords: Enterprise modeling, Information systems, Conceptual representations, Computer interfaces, Data modelsEnterprise modeling, Information systems, Conceptual representations, Computer interfaces, Keywords: Data models Data models of context-dependent organizational solutions and supporting 1. INTRODUCTION of context-dependent organizational and supporting IT applications. Hence, the use ofsolutions the capability notion 1. INTRODUCTION of context-dependent organizational solutions and supporting IT applications. Hence, the use of the capability notion 1. INTRODUCTION contributes to three key motivations: of context-dependent organizational solutions and supporting The notion of capability originates from competence-based IT applications. Hence, the use of the capability notion 1. INTRODUCTION contributes to three key motivations: The notion of and capability originates fromArchitecture competence-based applications. the use of the capability notion management military Enterprise (EA) IT contributes threeHence, key The notion of capability originates from competence-based (a) In the to context of motivations: business planning, it is becoming management and military Enterprise Architecture (EA) contributes to three key motivations: frameworks. has military been originates further incorporated in Enterprise The notion ofItand capability fromArchitecture competence-based In the context of business planning, it is becoming management Enterprise (EA) (a) recognized a fundamental component to describe what a frameworks. Itand has been further incorporated inrepresenting Enterprise (a) In the as context of business planning, it is becoming Modeling (EM) approaches for the purpose of management military Enterprise Architecture (EA) recognized as a fundamental component to describe what a frameworks. It has been further incorporated inrepresenting Enterprise (a) core business does and, in particular, its ability of delivering In the context of business planning, it is becoming Modeling (EM) approaches for the purpose of as a fundamental component to describe what a organizational fromfurther a for result-based perspective. Thus it recognized frameworks. Itdesigns has been incorporated inrepresenting Enterprise core business does and, in particular, its ability of delivering Modeling (EM) approaches the purpose of value that is relevant businessitsstrategy anda as does a fundamental component to describe what organizational designs from result-based perspective. Thus it recognized core business and,toin the particular, ability of(Ulrich delivering is an abstraction beyond theaa specifics of the more traditional Modeling (EM) approaches for the purpose of representing that is does relevant toin the businessitsstrategy (Ulrich and organizational designs from result-based perspective. Thus it value Rosen, 2011); core business and, particular, ability of delivering is an abstraction beyond the specifics of the more traditional that is relevant to the business strategy (Ulrich and perspectives ofdesigns EM, such asa specifics how (processes), whotraditional (agents), organizational from result-based perspective. Thus it value Rosen, 2011); is an abstraction beyond the of the more value that is relevant to the business strategy (Ulrich and perspectives of EM, as how (processes), whotraditional (agents), Rosen, what (concepts), andsuch why (goals). Capability offers a more (b) is an abstraction beyond the specifics of the more In IS2011); development, it makes IS designs more accessible to perspectives of EM, such as how (processes), who (agents), Rosen, 2011); what (concepts), and why (goals). Capability offers a more (b) In IS it makes IS designs accessible to direct focus on It also allows focusing onoffers the aspect of business development, perspectives of results. EM, as how (processes), who (agents), stakeholders by enabling them to more use the capability what (concepts), andsuch why (goals). Capability a more (b) In IS development, it makes IS designs more accessible to direct focus on results. It also allows focusing on the aspect of business stakeholders by enabling them to use the capability sustainability, ensuring that the Capability results areonoffers delivered and what (concepts), and why (goals). a more notion to development, describe theirby (Stirna et al., 2012); In IS itrequirements makes IS designs more accessible to direct focus oni.e. results. It also allows focusing the aspect of (b) business stakeholders enabling them to use the capability sustainability, i.e. ensuring that the results areondelivered and notion to stakeholders describe theirby requirements (Stirna et al., 2012); benefits attained even if the initial or envisioned business direct focus on results. It also allows focusing the aspect of business enabling them to use the capability sustainability, i.e. ensuring that the results are delivered and notion to describe their requirements (Stirna et al., 2012); benefits attained ifscenario the or envisioned business It supports thetheir configurability operations a higher situation or application In delivered practice, this (c) sustainability, i.e. even ensuring thatinitial thechanges. results are and notion to describe requirementsof(Stirna et al.,on 2012); benefits attained even ifscenario the initial or envisioned business (c) It supports the configurability of operations on a higher situation or application changes. In practice, this level than services, business process, resources, and requires business capabilities to be adjusted according to the benefits attained even ifscenario the initial or envisioned business (c) It supports the configurability of operations on a higher situation or application changes. In practice, this level than services, business process, resources, and requires business capabilities to be adjusted according to the technology solutions (Zdravkovic et al., 2017). (c) It supports the configurability of operations on a higher context in which they will be delivered. situation or application scenario changes. In practice, this than services, business process, resources, and requires business capabilities to be adjusted according to the level technology solutions (Zdravkovic et al., 2017). context in which they will be delivered. than solutions services, business etprocess, resources, and requires capabilities to be adjusted according to the level technology al., 2017). context inbusiness which they will be delivered. form the (Zdravkovic functional portfolio of an organisation or Currently, the notion capability has a growing presence in Capabilities technology solutions (Zdravkovic et al., 2017). context in which they of will be delivered. the functional portfolio of an organisation or Currently, theand notion of capability a growing system presence in Capabilities of a group form of organisations collaborating in a business the business IT alignment andhas information form the functional portfolio of an organisation or Currently, the notion of capability has a growing presence(IS) in Capabilities of a group of organisations collaborating in a business the business and IT alignment and information system (IS) ecosystem the portfolio core functional of ora form the functional of an organisation development frameworks starting from moresystem businessCurrently, theand notion of capability a growing presence in Capabilities of a groupby ofrepresenting organisations collaborating in blocks a business the business IT alignment andhas information (IS) ecosystem by representing the core functional blocks of a development frameworks starting from more businessSuch capability portfolio often called aa capability of a group organisations in blocks business oriented such asIT Business Architecture andsystem Business the business and alignment and information (IS) business. ecosystem byofaarepresenting the collaborating coreis functional of a development frameworks starting from more businessbusiness. Such capability portfolio is often called a capability oriented such as the Business Architecture and businessBusiness map. Capability also allowsportfolio separating the desired results form by arepresenting the coreis often functional of a Modeling, towards alignment-oriented represented by ecosystem development frameworks starting from more business. Such capability calledblocks a capability oriented such as Business Architecture and Business map. Capability also allows separating thecapabilities, desired results form Modeling, towards the alignment-oriented represented by the means of delivering it. For example, such as business. Such a capability portfolio is often called a capability Enterprise Architecture (EA), and EM. From the Business business oriented as the Business Architecture and Capability also allows separating the desired results form Modeling,such towards alignment-oriented represented by map. the means of delivering it.“Energy For example, capabilities, such as Enterprise Architecture (EA), andwhat EM.theFrom the does business “Claim Management”, or Consumption Control” are map. Capability also allows separating the desired results form perspective, a capability describes business that Modeling, towards the alignment-oriented represented by the means of delivering it. For example, capabilities, such as Enterprise Architecture (EA), andwhat EM.theFrom the does business “Claim Management”, or “Energy Consumption Control” are perspective, a capability describes business that essential toof andelivering organization but they can be offered by such various means For example, capabilities, as creates value for customers et al., It the Enterprise Architecture (EA), (Zdravkovic andwhat EM.theFrom the 2017). business “Claim Management”, orit.“Energy Consumption Control” are perspective, a capability describes business does that toinan organization but they can be offered by various creates value for customers (Zdravkovic et al., including 2017). It essential providers different ways. They can be used in organisations “Claim Management”, or “Energy Consumption Control” are represents a design from a result-based perspective perspective, a capability describes what the business does that to an organization but they can be offered by various creates value for customers (Zdravkovic et al., 2017). It essential providers different ways. but They cancan be used inecosystems. organisations represents a design from a result-based perspective in groups oforganization organizations forming business essential toin they be offered by various various dimensions including organization’s goals, creates value for customers (Zdravkovic et values, al., including 2017). It or providers inan different ways. They can be used in organisations represents a design from a result-based perspective including or in groups of organizations forming business ecosystems. various dimensions including organization’s values, goals, providers in different ways. They can be used in organisations processes, services, people, and resources. In IS engineering represents a design from a result-based perspective including various dimensions including organization’s values, goals, or in groups of organizations forming business ecosystems. processes, services, people, and resources. In IS engineering capability has emerged as the means to support development various dimensions including organization’s values, goals, or in groups of organizations forming business ecosystems. processes, services, people, and resources. In IS engineering capability has emerged as the means to support development processes, services, people, and resources. In IS engineering capability has emerged as the means to support development capability© emerged as the means to support development 2405-8963 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Copyright ©has 2019 IFAC 1143Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Peer review©under of International Federation of Automatic Copyright 2019 responsibility IFAC 1143Control. Copyright © 2019 IFAC 1143 10.1016/j.ifacol.2019.11.347 Copyright © 2019 IFAC 1143
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In this regard, a challenge emerges when one business entity uses a capability that is developed by another business entity. In such cases the using organization might not be aware of the details of capability’s design and implementation. Interface is a common notion used in system development to leverage between internal and external aspects of system components; it has been long established in object-oriented, component, and service design as the means to define entry points for them, at the same time preventing access to the internal logic. Interfaces are seen as means of enabling reusability. The goal of this study is to propose the principle of the interface for the concept of capability. The overall aim of this research is to support automated management of business capabilities by underlying IS structures, and hence we have chosen to demonstrate our proposal by using the Capability Driven Development (CDD) framework (Berzisa et al., 2015). The motivation for choosing CDD as it has a defined capability meta-model, a capability design methodology, as we all as it has been applied in a number of cases. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives background to capability and how it is used for representing business functions; this is followed by a presentation of the CDD modelling framework. Section 3 presents the proposal for the interface for capability in a model-oriented development environment, such as CDD. Section 4 elaborates the theoretical proposal on a business case concerning regional road maintenance. A discussion and concluding remarks are presented in sections 5 and 6. 2. BACKGROUND 2.1 Capability and Capability Maps Capability is used in a variety of organisational modelling approaches and frameworks. For example, OMG’s proposal for Business Architecture (BA) (OMG, 2017), uses business capability for describing what a business does - specifically, it is an ability or capacity that the business may possess or exchange to achieve certain outcome. The Value Delivery Modeling Language (VDML) (OMG, 2009), defines a modeling language for analysis and design of the business operations of an enterprise with a focus on the creation and exchange of value. Its aim is to provide an abstraction of the operations appropriate for business planners. VDML links strategy and business models to the activities, roles, and capabilities that run the enterprise. Capability is also a key concept of EA frameworks. E.g., Department of Defence Architecture Framework (DODAF) (US Department of Defence, 2009), defines capability as “the ability to achieve a desired effect under specified (performance) standards and conditions through combinations of ways and means (activities and resources) to perform a set of activities”. Condition means the state of an environment or situation in which a performer performs; desired effect means desired state of a resource; resource means data, information, performers, materiel, or personnel types that are produced or consumed. The NATO Architecture Framework (NAF), (UK Ministry of Defence, 2013) defines capability as “the ability of
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one or more resources to deliver a specified type of effect or a specified course of action”. The NAF meta-model defines the following key relationships of capability: capabilities may be specialized into more specific capabilities, composed of several capabilities, as well as dependent on other capabilities. Capability when applied is associated with measurable categories. Capability elaborated into Capability configuration package, which is used to configure resources for capability implementation. In TOGAF (The Open Group, 2011) the concept of capability is modeled as a function element type in the Business Architecture domain, which in addition defines strategy, governance, organization, and key business processes. In ArchiMate (The Open Group, 2016), capability is modeled as a strategy element type that realizes a course of action using assigned resources. In summary, the current use of capability is concerned with organization’s ability for delivering a business function. The “integrational” nature of capability is used to bind the strategic/intentional part of the organizational design with the operational or technical parts. Hence, capability should be seen as a key concept relevant to both strategic planners as well as operational planners. Capabilities are representing the basic building blocks of a business and hence a common practice is to collect capabilities into a capability map. The capability map of an organization represents a complete view of what that business does. The capability map links two complex environments - business architecture and IT architecture and, hence, it provides the foundation for the alignment between them. Capability maps can be hierarchical i.e. they include several levels of capabilities, where each level is a decomposition of one or more capabilities at a higher level (Fig. 1). At the highest level, capabilities are typically depicted according to different categories, such as strategic, core, and supporting. At the lowest level, business capabilities are related with the IT applications supporting them, where several applications can be mapped to a certain business capability and an application can be used to support several capabilities.
Fig. 1 A Capability map, showing the examples of levels 1 and 2 capabilities. A business capability is related to the business goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), as well as to the context within which it exists. An organisation, especially in the situations where it collaborates with others to deliver value, needs to
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have a conceptually clear view of what might constitute a capability. This motivates the need for a capability collaboration concept in order to be able to express the possible relations among the different business capabilities within a capability map of the organisation, or even outside of it. In the case of external collaboration, there is a need to distinguish between internal capabilities and external capabilities provided by other organizations. The details of external capabilities owned by other organizations may not be important to know, or, indeed as will probably be the most common case, may never be known, since such capability designs are considered as competitive advantage to their owners. If several organizations are involved in a business ecosystem aimed to provide the value to its customers in an integrated way then the capability map belongs to the ecosystem as a whole. In this case the contributing capabilities are distributed among the partners and it is important to specify capability owners. Even in this constellation, the details of partner’s capabilities are not needed to know – the essential need is to connect to each other’s capabilities to streamline unified business services.
It is a methodology developed to facilitate continuous delivery of business capabilities in changing business conditions (context) by support of IS infrastructure. The CDD approach has developed an integrated methodology consisting of a metamodel (see Fig. 2) and guidelines for the way of working. The figure distinguishes – the main design part (in white) including goal/KPI, process and context modelling, variability modeling for supporting different contexts (in yellow), as well adjustment algorithms for swapping capabilities at the runtime based on changes in the surrounding business context and / OR KPI values (in orange). The main concepts of the meta-model relevant to this study are described in Table 1 Table 1. Main concepts of the CDD meta-model. Concept Capability
KPI
2.2 Capability Driven Development One methodological approach for dealing with business capabilities implemented by the means of software system is Capability Driven Development (CDD) (Berzisa et al, 2015).
Context Set Context Element Range Context Element Measurable Property Context Element Value Goal
Process
Fig. 2. CDD meta-model (Sandkuhl and Stirna, 2018).
Description Capability is the ability and capacity that enable an enterprise to achieve a business Goal in a certain context (represented by Context Set). Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable properties that can be seen as targets for achievement of Goals. Context Set describes the set of Context Elements that are relevant for design and delivery of a specific Capability. Context Element Range specifies boundaries of permitted values for a specific Context Element and for a specific Context Set. A Context Element is representing any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. Measurable Property is any information about the organization’s environment that can be measured. Context Element Value is a value of a specific Context Element at a given the runtime situation. It can be calculated from several Measurable Properties. Goal is a desired state of affairs that needs to be attained. Goals can be refined into subgoals forming a goal model. Goals should typically be expressed in measurable terms such as KPIs. Process is series of actions that are performed in order to achieve particular result. A Process supports Goals and has input and produces output in terms of information and/or material. When initiated a process is perceived to consume resources.
In service-centred organizations, the Process element as depicted in Fig.2 and described in Table 2 could be replaced by the notion of Service; or Service could be placed between Capability and Process, depicting the interface towards consumers, enabled by Capability which includes one or more Process elements.
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Fig. 3 illustrates the capability for service promotion at a municipality elicited to realize a goal with a related KPI, and linked to a context set consisting of three context elements, namely, municipality population, season, and weather. This capability fulfils goal “to be able to promote online services”. This goal is measured by KPI “percentage of online services used”.
Fig. 3. A capability linked to business goals and context. The meta-model is implemented in a technical environment to enable the support for the methodology by consisting of the following key components (see Fig.4).
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3. DEFINITION FOR CAPABILITY INTERFACE Organisations may be concerned with several approaches when planning and designing their business capabilities. The first is internal and often top-down oriented, where an organisation sets the effort to plot its functional portfolio in the form of a capability map like explained in section 2.1. The organisation then make tactical decisions if all capabilities will be internal (see section 2.1), or some will be taken from external providers. Another approach may be applied when several organisations collaborate in an ecosystem; then the specific capabilities of the overall business functionality of the ecosystem are distributed as they are designed, managed and provided by different partners, where those partners often change over time. A common logic of these approaches is that the capabilities, when used by with others, could reveal only the aspects needed for their consumers (byers or partners), while keeping the inner working and designs hidden. Interface is a notion used in system development to leverage between internal and external aspects of system components, as we explained earlier in this study. For business processes, interfaces are typically publicized as the message protocols of process activities (Zdravkovic and Johanesson, 2004). For capabilities, this means that the models of goals, processes resources, and adjustment rules are for the internal use (see Fig. 2), because they concern strategy and functionality of the capability provider, and hence, can be encapsulated. What needs to be publicized to others is the business context and the key performance indicators (KPIs), the capability is designed to support by its functionality. Both these parts of capability, context and KPIs, represent only data. Hence, the interface that they model for capability is data-oriented. Fig. 5 illustrates the suggested interface, and Table 2 summarizes the interface parts and elements. We have adapted the “lollipop” and socket symbols used in UML to model capability interfaces.
Fig. 4. Overview of the CDD technical architecture. Capability Design Tool (CDT) is a graphical modelling tool for supporting the design of capability elements. Capability Navigation Application (CNA) is an application that makes use of the models (capability designs) created in the CDT to monitor the capability context by receiving the values of measurable property (MP in Fig. 3) and handle run-time capability adjustments. Capability Context Platform (CCP) is a component for distributing context data to the CNA. Capability Delivery Application (CDA) represents existing software solutions of the organization, i.e. the business applications that are used to support the delivery of organization’s capabilities. This can be a custom-made system, or a configured standard system such as SAP ERP. The CNA communicates, or configures the CDA to adjust for changing data contexts during capability design and delivery. Monitoring of defined KPIs facilitate capability refinement and pattern updating.
Fig. 5. Capability with its 2 lollipops (KPI and Context) and contained elements. Once the capability is designed and its interface is specified, it can be used in different situations: 1.
A company follows a capability-oriented design and it wants to offer its capabilities to other companies, while not revealing the internal design of those capabilities; thus, when the company offers a capability, such as “Low Risk Management”, its interface describes the supported KPIs and the business context in which the capability is valid.
2.
A company follows a capability design, but in its capability map some of the capabilities are not feasible in the company. Hence the company is using an external
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capability provider for a missing capability (such as in 1), if the provider supports company’s KPIs and Context defined for that capability. The company may choose to replace an existing provider with another capability provider, if, for example, KPIs drop, or Context changes. 3.
initially presented in (Zdravkovic et al., 2018). It is envisioned as an ecosystem model as shown in Fig. 6.
In a business ecosystem, the partners collaborate in terms of capabilities. Each partner offering a capability to another partner, describes it, as well as it publishes its interface to “inform” of its performance (KPI) and validity scope (Context). Table 2: Description of capability interface elements. Part
Element
Content
KPI
KPI
Each defined KPI for the goal(s) that are realized by the capability, is an element in this set; the set thus defines required measurable targets for achievement of the capability; at the runtime KPI values are measured to determine if the capability is providing expected performance.
Context
ContextSet: ContextElement
Context Element represents an aspect or entity in the business environment, which influences the capability; at the runtime Context Element values are measured to determine if it is in the allowed range for the designed capability.
ContextSet: ContextElementRange
Context Element Range is optional; if set, it specifies the boundaries of permitted values for a specific Context Element of the capability.
Fig. 6. Capability constellation for the Smart Traffic Management. The vision of an intelligent transport management system aims at having proactive road maintenance based on weather data, traffic, as well as road conditions, which is especially relevant to consider in winter road conditions. In order to achieve this vision, the Latvian State Roads (LSR) has to offer the capability “Smart Traffic Management”, for which it needs to engage three capability suppliers, namely, Meteorology Centre for “Environment Monitoring”, a crowdsourced navigation service provider for “Routing”, as well as Latvian Autoroad Maintainer (LAM) for the capability of “Road Maintenance”. Because Latvian Autoroad Maintainer has limited resources in terms of snow ploughing trucks, it needs to subcontract parts of regional road maintenance from several road maintenance companies, each of them offering “Road Maintenance” capabilities. The regional road maintenance companies offer capabilities that are very similar to the one that the LAM has. Hence we can assume that the same capability design can be reused.
In the next section we illustrate the use of the proposed capability interface for the outlined situation 3. 4. EXAMPLE CASE The proposal for capability interfaces is illustrated by an example of Intelligent Transportation Systems in Latvia
This example assumes that the capabilities of the various actors are loosely coupled and that any capability-consumer actor cannot influence the internal designs of the capabilities of the suppliers. E.g. the Latvian State Roads has a capability that depends on environment monitoring and routing capabilities, and in essence, it is only using their services without being able to directly influence what data is offered and in which format and frequency, e.g. the weather forecast is made every two hours. The capability of Smart Traffic Management includes management of dynamic traffic signs and traffic lights adjustments depending on traffic conditions. This capability uses context elements of driving conditions and driving speed limit, both of which are published as open data
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for use by other actors. Smart Traffic Management capability also requires road maintenance capability from LAM. The capability interfaces allow easier and more efficient identification of capabilities offered by suppliers. E.g. in case of KPI “number of roads with poor driving conditions” exceeding certain margin beyond which the LAM would not be able to cope efficiently, the LSR would need to look for other actors (e.g. other governmental organizations, private companies, or help from abroad) that can deliver similar capability. Considering KPIs and context elements of those capabilities would make the process of capability aggregation more efficient. Naturally, it might happen that the potential suppliers are not capability-enabled. In this case, the capability consumer should first model the capability of interest with a particular focus on what KPIs and context elements can be discovered and measured (often based on open data such as traffic cameras or road conditions). For the purpose of selecting a capability and integrating it with other capabilities, specifying only capability interfaces should be sufficient. 5. CONCLUDING REMARKS This paper proposes the concept and a notation for capability interface that separates the internal design of a capability from aspects that are of interest for external capability users in order to select and incorporate a capability in their capability design. To this end the proposed capability interface exposes KPIs and context elements including their ranges for which the capability is relevant. Capability interfaces support combining business capabilities from smaller (sub) capabilities offered by capability suppliers thus supporting creation of a capabilityenabled business ecosystem. Such an ecosystem would be more sustainable because its actors would not need to be obliged to expose their internal designs in order to participate in business offerings. In this regard, we have outlined three usage scenarios for capability-enabled collaboration. This approach would also facilitate capability reuse, i.e. if a company wants to adapt existing capability designs, it can first consider the available capability based on the information provided in the interface and on the basis of this information chose to analyse the rest of the capability design. The proposal contributes to organisations’ digital transformations and their digital business maturity as it describes a digital solution for connecting the capabilities of a single organisation, or of several organisations participating in a business ecosystem. In terms of issues for future work, the following tasks are identified: (1) the proposal of the capability interface needs to be further refined and validated with a large case of capability management involving several organizations; (2) the capability interface needs to be elaborated in the tool support for capability design; (3) since the current proposal only addresses capability design, additional investigation of the use of capability interfaces at run-time is needed.
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