Mapping Business Apps to Business Capabilities - what level?

[MEBoatman]

Business capabilities are hierarchical. When mapping business apps to business capabilities, what level are you doing that at?

Here's an example: 

L0 Capability = New Business & Underwriting

L1 = New Business

L1 = Underwriting

Let's say I have PolicyAdmin that fits under L1 New Business. And I have Underwriter that fits under L1 Underwriting. It only makes sense to map those 2 apps to the L1 capabilities. HOWEVER, do you also map them to the L0 capability as well? We have use cases where people want to see all applications that provide the "New Business & Underwriting" capability (L0) - regardless of which L1 they map to. But we also have use cases where we'd only want to see those apps providing New Business within the New Business & Underwriting capability.

So my question is really: Do you map to each capability in the hierarchy? Or just to the lowest defined capability?

[lpruit2]

 @MEBoatman 

That’s an excellent question—I've been wondering how others tackle it as well.

In my view, the advice on L0, L1, L2, etc., makes sense if we map a Business Application only to the level that is farthest from L0 while still being accurate and meaningful.

The challenge arises with a platform like ServiceNow, which contains several modules that span multiple L0 business capabilities. In such cases, a single Business Application should appear once for each relevant L0 at the deepest layer where it can be meaningfully associated. This allows the application to be represented in multiple L0 branches without duplication at higher levels.

[mcastoe · Accepted solution]

@MEBoatman,

I've always guided customers that you should map to the leaf level capabilities.   Be as specific as possible in your Capability model and how its supported.

Say you have a 3 level capability model and you map an app to level 1 (zero based so second level).  That "implies" that the app maps to all of the level 2 children of that level 1 capability.  Then imagine you have another app that maps to one of the level 2 children but not the others.  It is now difficult (you have to deal with rollups and such) to tell that the two apps support the same capability yet the second app has less capabilities supported.

I understand its more work.  It's also more accurate.   Be specific, get better results is my thinking.