Relation of Business Apps to Capabilities

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hi Everyone, 

how do you model your BA - Business Capability relations?

E.g. I have a Business App: SAP-S4-TAX, which is part of a platform BA: SAP-S4.

Every platform App like SAP-S4-TAX supports slightly different set of business capabilities (mostly level 2).

How would you connect the parent Platform to the capabilities? Would you link it to every L2 capability that the child Apps support (meaning the sum of all capabilities having relationships to its platform apps), or only link the platform level to Level 1 capabilities? Or maybe not link to the capabilities at all?

I'm thinking from the design/modelling perspective but also from operations/checking impact perspective, which kind of setup is more preferred.

Many thanks for any pointers on this!

[TheJoeDC]

If SAP-S4 is your platform app, wouldn't it exist in the Service Delivery domain? The Capability's ("Tax Processing") would be linked to the Business Apps ("Drake Tax Software") then the BA to the Application Services ("Sap-S4-Tax" -> "SAP-S4")

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hi, and thanks for your update!

I'm not sure I understood properly - I'll try to rephrase a bit

SAP-S4 <-- this is the Business Application (platform host) (should I also link the capability "TAX-PROCESSING" here???)

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SAP-S4-TAX <-- this is the Business Application (platform app that has a parent platform host) (I will definitely link capability "TAX-PROCESSING" here)

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Then there would be an application Service (e.g. SAP-S4-TAX-PROD) liked to platform app.

So my question was mainly whether it is good to link the entire "platform host" Business App to capabilities, or only do that for platform-app level apps. 

[TheJoeDC]

The CSDM white papers have Business Applications as a "logical representation" (name of app used to provide functionality). I think a platform works there as you outlined (linked to the capabilities possibly based on maturity) as there is an "architecture type" attribute you can set platform host or app. So it makes sense to link the platform there I think. 

Also, if you go over to NOW create there is a "CSDM Data Examples" PPT that I found helpful. There is actually a few slides on SAP:

[Carolyn Rast]

@Tom Sienkiewicz it is my understanding, that SAP-S4 the platform may have no capabilities by itself.  What capability does the platform provide?  e.g. What is MS System Center if you take away all the modules - SCOM, SCCM, etc.?  It is the Platform Applications, running on the Platform Host, which provide capabilities.  Therefore, SAP-S4-TAX provides the capability. 

Bottom line - what capabilities does the platform provide before the applications are loaded?