--- sourceDocument: Australia Enterprise Architecture sourceDocumentLink: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/application-portfolio-management Release : - australia ft:locale : - en-US ft:publication_title : - Australia Enterprise Architecture ft:clusterId : - appportman bundleId : - appportman workflow : - Technology --- # Exploring a business portfolio # Exploring a business portfolio {#ariaid-title1} Release version: Australia Updated March 12, 2026 ![](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ico-clock) 2 minutes to read Summarize ![AI sparkle icon](https://servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ai-sparkle-icon) Summarized using AI This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete. ## Summary of Exploring a business portfolio Enterprise Architects can use the Business Portfolio page in ServiceNow to view and manage their organization's business capabilities and the business applications that support them. This page provides a hierarchical map of business capabilities, showing their relationships and assessment scores, which help guide strategic decisions. Show full answer Show less ## Key Features * **Capability Hierarchy:** Visualize the full hierarchy of business capabilities, including parent and leaf (childless) capabilities. * **Assessment and Scoring:** Business capabilities are assessed via indicators that generate scores ranging from 1 (major gap) to 10 (no gap). These scores help prioritize improvements and business application alignment. * **Business Application Management:** Assign or unassign business applications to capabilities. Retired or End of Life applications are hidden by default but can be shown by updating a system property with ServiceNow support. * **Value Stream Mapping:** Associate business capabilities with value stream stages to link capabilities to specific organizational processes or steps. * **Interactive Hierarchy Navigation:** Expand and collapse capability levels, view sub-capability counts, and see the number of directly related business applications and their scores. * **Fiscal Year Filtering:** Filter capability scores by fiscal year to analyze performance trends over time. * **Zoom and Layout:** The interface supports browser zoom up to 400% with automatic layout adjustment to maintain readability and functionality. ## Key Outcomes * Gain a comprehensive, hierarchical view of business capabilities and their supporting applications, enabling better alignment between business goals and technology. * Identify capability gaps through assessment scores to prioritize investments and improvements. * Manage the lifecycle of business applications in context with capabilities, ensuring current and relevant application support. * Integrate business capability mapping with value stream stages to understand capability contributions to organizational processes. * Support strategic decision-making with clear visibility into capability health and application support status. ## Related Tasks ServiceNow customers can perform several related activities to maintain and optimize their business portfolio, such as: * Adding or deleting business capabilities and sub-capabilities * Assigning or unassigning business applications * Creating demands aligned to capabilities * Updating capability hierarchies * Viewing capability roadmaps and generating insights on business applications As an Enterprise Architect, view the capability hierarchy, manage capabilities, and assign business applications to the capabilities. The Business Portfolio page displays the hierarchy map for your business capabilities. You can view the number of defined business capabilities and the number of business applications that support these capabilities. Business applications marked as Retired or in End of Life lifecycle stage aren't displayed on the Business Portfolio page. However, you can view those business applications by updating the sn_apm_ws.business_application_default_filter system property. Contact your ServiceNow® account service manager to update the system property. A business capability is the ability of an organization to do its business activities successfully and fulfill its business goals. Use the business capability mapping to establish a CI relationship between the business capability and the business applications. The Business Capabilities Hierarchy page contains the following items: * Capabilities: Total number of business capabilities. * Leaf Capabilities: Total number of capabilities at the leaf level (that have no child capabilities of its own) in all the hierarchies of the business capabilities listed. * Assessed: Total number of assessed business capabilities. * Not Assessed: Total number of capabilities that haven't been assessed. * Major Gap: Total number of capabilities with a score in the range of 1-4. * Medium Gap: Total number of capabilities with a score in the range of 4-7. * No Gap: Total number of capabilities with a score in the range of 7-10. {#manage-business-portfolio__ul_og1_ljn_fwb} You can create a capability or sub-capability, and then assign a business application to the capability. Business capabilities are assessed by indicators to provide indicator scores used to make strategic decisions on the business applications that support the business capability. You can sort the business capabilities by their scores. Note: The business capability scores of the current fiscal year are displayed by default. You can change the fiscal year value using the Fiscal year filter. By default, the first business capability in the hierarchy at level 0 expands to display its immediate child capabilities at level 1. For subsequent business capabilities and child capabilities, select the expand icon () to expand and view its sub-capabilities at each level. You can see the total count of the sub-capabilities below each parent capability, the total number of business applications directly related to each capability, and their capability score. When you expand a parent capability, you can see the number of sub-capabilities at that level. You can also see the total count of business applications directly related to the sub-capability. Note: You can zoom on this page or any of the child pages to 200% or 400% through your browser settings without the loss of content or functionality. Page layouts are transformed into a vertical, stacked view automatically. You can associate business capabilities with value stream stages to map your organizational capabilities to specific steps in your value streams. Value stream stages represent the discrete steps that make up a value stream, and each stage can be associated with multiple business capabilities. To view the value stream stages associated with a business capability, open a business capability record and select the Value Stream Stages tab. The tab displays a read-only list of associated value stream stages, showing the name, display name, and description of each stage. **Related tasks** * [Add a business capability](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/~AUDlhf_PLTuF0tk6aCvRw "Add a business capability to the capability hierarchy map.") * [Create a demand towards achievement of a capability](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/QI0HPpVnTyvRSLfj5yi~GA "Use a demand as a step to identify cost-saving opportunities on capabilities, to meet the target. The strategy that you associate with the demand action decides the strategy for the capability.") * [Update the hierarchy of a business capability](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/IBv5_nxRg1LS5omvDa25Rw "Assign a hierarchy ID to a business capability.") * [Create a sub-capability](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/saFQEPho0LSNv4vHVQGPcQ "Add a sub-capability to the capability hierarchy map.") * [Assign a business application](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/nFMnRqMdbvlesjuLCM7jWA "Assign a business application to a capability to relate the capability with the application.") * [Delete a capability from the hierarchy](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/Qv7Stv5WtFRbeDhLTw9Rrw "Delete a capability that you no longer require.") * [Unassign a business application from a capability](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/Hi4za1MXFS5lnv2WJsZuMw "You can unassign a business application from a capability.") * [View a roadmap of a business capability](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/FaB3kQ6GGmsHnHkp6Dk6CQ "View the roadmap of your business capabilities and align them with the organization's strategy. Creating a portfolio plan helps you plan, prioritize, and roadmap the work for your business capability.") * [Generate insights into business applications](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/5IxrApCiC6pxAgomznqTEQ "Learn the details of business applications and gather concise and actionable insights on business applications from the summary that is generated by ServiceNow Otto for Enterprise Architecture (EA). The business application insights are context-aware, that is the summary automatically includes relevant information from the specific page where you generate the insights.")