Value Streams, Capabilities, and IT Services: A Simple Model View

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I’ve witnessed some organizations spend an inordinate amount of time on value stream analysis and make the value stream mapping a complex process. Much time is wasted on the concept, definition, or nomenclature. From a business architecture perspective, it may be worth the effort. However, if a well-crafted business architecture doesn’t align well with the IT architecture, it is of little or no use in a real-world enterprise architecture.

For a practical enterprise solution, value stream mapping is much simplified and only more relevant for significant capabilities and IT services.

This article presents a simplified and step-by-step agile enterprise solution architecture (Agile ESA) modeling process for mapping between value streams, capabilities, and IT services. The example process is a visual walkthrough illustrated with tables and figures based on a simple Order Processing Solution (OPS) case scenario for easy understanding.

Enterprise solution architecture (ESA) falls between enterprise architecture (EA) and solution architecture (SA), leaning more toward the latter. It’s an IT service-based architecture for the missing link between EA and SA. Unlike an EA, an ESA often takes an agile approach, so an ESA is generally referred to as an Agile ESA or A-ESA for short.

Note that ESA draws up existing EA (enterprise architecture) frameworks and processes, such as industry process classification standards, but with a distinct focus. While conventional capability models often accentuate business capability mapping, Agile ESA prioritizes the mapping of IT services within the solution space, complementing rather than replacing EA.

Journey Map

Before we dive into the capability mapping, let’s briefly introduce the journey map because the value stream can start from a customer journey or journey map using design thinking or a customer-centric approach.

Below is an example mapping between the value stream and journey map. Through this mapping, you can see various touch points, user feedback, and capability instance improvements. These can be reflected in the Agile ESA model as property attributes.

Note that the journey map is only one of the case scenario approaches. ESA is not intended for detailed analysis of customer journeys, but is interested in the key non-functional requirements or quality attribute specifications from these business processes and functions.

According to a standard Business Capability Planning, the value stream can also be modeled using other frameworks. For example, SIPOC (Suppliers, Inputs, Processes, Outputs, and Customers) from Lean Six Sigma to assess the efficiency of each business capability instance in terms of waste through lead time and throughput time, and SAFe, which has two similar classes of value streams (operational and development).

Value Stream Mapping with Capabilities

From journey maps, we move to value streams (cross-functional, customer-centric value flows) or business processes (departmental tasks). Here is an example of value stream mapping with capabilities.

The following figure shows a four-stage value stream, which is the set of actions from initial request to customer value realization.

The following table shows the value stream with its stakeholders, trigger points, value created, criteria, and value items.

The following figure shows the partial mapping between the value streams and capabilities.

Capability vs. Business Process – I’ve seen many people raise questions about the relationship between the capability model and the business process model. Capability is very much related to business process modeling, for example, Level 3 of the Capability typically corresponds to Level 3 (scenario level) of the Business Process, and this level then goes further down to map between the Capability and IT Services and between the Business Scenario and Use Case/Subprocess, respectively. 

Capability Mapping with IT Services

Now comes the step where business and IT intersect. The mapping between capabilities and IT services is critical to an enterprise solution.

The following figure shows partial mappings between a capability and its process (further drilling down to lower-level functional services), and between a capability and a functional service, following the previous figure.

An Overview of the Modeling Process

Now let’s put the above mappings together in the following figure using a modeling approach.

The figure above shows a mapping process between value stream, capability, and IT service. An IT service can include people, processes, and technology.

The mapping focuses on the capabilities that connect both value streams and IT services. As shown in the figure, the value streams drive the capabilities, while the IT services build up the capabilities.

Now you will naturally question the view from your viewpoint. Using an agile approach, ESA modeling will change an often inappropriate capability model through iterative and incremental mapping to IT services until all key stakeholders reach consensus.

Note that traditionally, mappings between capabilities and IT services take a tabular form. The modeling approach takes into account a more dynamic IT service relationship to more realistically align key business capabilities and IT considerations.

Below is a model view generated by the Agile ESA modeling tool for the above example case from an architect’s viewpoint. Note that different views of the same content will be presented from different viewpoints. For example, from a business user’s viewpoint, the view may focus more on the processes and values of the mapping, and from a capability-centric viewpoint, the view can reflect the connections between value streams and IT services.

Agile ESA modeling tools facilitate the management of dependencies between capabilities and their associated elements, enabling architects to visualize and analyze these relationships to ensure architectural integrity. Modeling tools will provide templates and model examples to accelerate the creation of value stream maps and capability maps, promoting consistency and best practices.

Capability vs. IT Service – Capability generally refers to the ability, capacity, or potential to perform a specific action. It can be focused on differently by different people. ESA capability mapping focuses more on IT capabilities. Similarly, an IT service is a combination of IT resources, processes, and people designed to deliver specific business value. In a service-oriented ESA, an IT service is more narrowly defined as a self-contained, dynamic, reusable composition that performs specific application functions. See this post for FAQs on Capability vs. IT Service.

Impact of Agile ESA Capability Mapping

Impact on Business Alignment

While a detailed breakdown of capability model creation is extensive and geared towards business architects, this article focuses on the ESA mapping process for IT architects, with the key steps outlined in the previous sections. Effective capability mapping requires collaboration among key stakeholders. Business analysts contribute to business processes and component models, users provide valuable case scenarios and requirements, and IT architects focus on mapping capabilities to IT services.

By leveraging the industry-specific capability model or heat-map assessments (innovative, obsolete, to be improved, new, etc.) in enterprise business models, IT architects can identify key capabilities and choose architectural styles and patterns that fit the enterprise environment or modernize the legacy enterprise solutions based on the model mapping.

Impact on Organizational Structure

Capability mapping has a reciprocal relationship with organizational structure and culture. The mapping process often reveals the existing structure, while the resulting architectural styles can influence and reshape it. Ideally, the architectural style should align with and support the organizational structure.

Impact on Digital Transformation

The Agile ESA approach ensures the continued relevance of the capability model through an iterative process. Capability mapping is not a one-time activity but rather an incremental process that evolves with each iteration of the Agile ESA methodology. Due to its agile approach, which accommodates innovation and significant changes, Agile ESA is well suited to support digital transformation initiatives. By bridging the gap between business and IT, Agile ESA enables organizations to effectively adapt their enterprise solutions to the demands of digital transformation.

Impact on Architectural Viability

Capability mapping contributes to architectural viability, and the Agile ESA includes metrics to assess the effectiveness of enterprise solutions. The metrics defined within the Agile ESA framework provide a means to track the effectiveness of IT services in supporting specific enterprise solutions and their underlying business capabilities.

Impact on Architectural Design

Last but not least, there is an impact on architectural design closely related to architectural viability. When the key mappings between capabilities and IT services are clear, identifying service domains and specifying functional granularity and integration patterns (the tough part of architectural design) becomes easier.

Summary

Enterprise capability is essential in an enterprise solution. Capability mapping with value stream and IT service ensures business alignment with IT through a practical architectural modeling. Capability modeling improves architectural viability through cross-referencing and optimization. It’s an effective approach to verify the capability model. Through an iterative process, capabilities are added, enhanced, optimized, or retired.

Capability mapping is often challenging due to a lack of top management support, a lack of skilled ESA architect(s), or poor communication between business and IT. In addition, capability mapping is often missing from enterprise solutions due to a lack of awareness.  However, the Agile ESA modeling approach, which requires capability mapping, can facilitate collaboration between different stakeholders with its S3 principle: simple, significant, and systematic – building a systematic model based on simple notations and significant case scenarios.

For more information on Agile ESA modeling, read my new book: “Mastering Enterprise Solution Architecture.” Thank you.

Reference

Mastering Enterprise Solution Modeling/Gu, Sean. APRESS, 2024

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