ture.
The developed method builds on existing re-
sources available in the literature and regularly ap-
plied in practice: the EA model and the business ca-
pability map viewpoint. On this basis, the authors de-
rived a business entity map illustrating the informa-
tion necessary for the business capabilities as well as
the information ownership map illustrating the depen-
dencies between the functional and the data view and
being the basis for the method introduced here.
As a foundation for the developed artifact, we per-
formed a profound literature analysis and provided a
short overview on existing EA-related business capa-
bility and business entity resources. Following a de-
sign science approach, we examined the developed
artifact in practice. It has been successfully applied
in the real-world business environment and lessons
learned have been integrated to refine method and
architecture viewpoints. The resulting three-phase
method to identify the dependencies of business capa-
bilities was illustrated by a case study from a telecom-
munication industry.
This paper is of course subject to some limita-
tions. The developed method was validated in three
companies and one of these cases was described here.
There is surely a potential to illustrate further cases of
application of the method developed here extending
the list of possible scenarios and contributing to spe-
cific extensions and variations. Interestingly enough
would be to show which limitations this method may
have if applied for small and medium-sized compa-
nies and if it is applicable at all. Some practitioners
may certainly be interested in the details of applica-
tion of the described method in the mentioned com-
panies - the generalized method description provided
here may not be sufficient for those who want to apply
it in practice. Last but not least, we assumed the avail-
ability of certain artifacts in the enterprise while will-
ing to apply the presented dependency method. This
may not reflect the reality in many companies - there
may be support needed - e.g. in form of guidelines -
to fulfill the requirements to apply this method. They
are: development of the business capability map and
its anchoring in the EA model in terms of the depen-
dencies to other architecture elements. Finally, the de-
pendency analysis method requires further evaluation
and justification in order to prove its general applica-
bility and relevance.
Next to addressing the possible limitations of this
paper elaborated on above, there are further research
potentials which may be derived from this paper. One
of our ideas refers to the issue of the tool support for
the analysis described here. Obviously, multiple busi-
ness capabilities and business entities may result in
hundreds of relationships. Their analysis may be very
exhaustive if performed without support of any soft-
ware. It would be interesting to examine the exist-
ing tools (not only in the area of EAM) to find out to
which extend are they able to support this method and
subsequently to define the elements of the tool meta
model, functionalities, views and workflows which
are required by this approach and which would be ac-
cepted by the business and IT.
Since the method to identify dependencies of busi-
ness capabilities is based here on business entities, it
would be interesting to make a study on further EA
elements which may be used in the dependency anal-
ysis of business capabilities like products, processes
or technology elements and in the same time defining
the cases in which these methods may be preferred.
Referring to use cases - also mentioned in the previ-
ous paragraph, it would be finally attention-catching
to define the method extensions applicable for the de-
fined set of use cases, e.g. acquisition of a business
capability, out-souring, or pattern-based strategy.
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