"Capabilities represent what the business does, ๐ง๐จ๐ญ ๐ก๐จ๐ฐ ๐ข๐ญ ๐๐จ๐ž๐ฌ ๐ข๐ญ.". Or rather "Capabilities represent what the business wants to do". This is typically a modeling act, creating an abstract image of what the company does. As such - it's crucial for architecture.

๐ธ๐‘™๐‘–๐‘๐‘–๐‘ก๐‘Ž๐‘ก๐‘–๐‘›๐‘” ๐‘กโ„Ž๐‘’๐‘ ๐‘’ ๐‘๐‘Ž๐‘๐‘Ž๐‘๐‘–๐‘™๐‘–๐‘ก๐‘–๐‘’๐‘  ๐‘–๐‘  ๐‘Ž ๐‘๐‘œ๐‘Ÿ๐‘’ ๐‘Ž๐‘๐‘ก๐‘–๐‘ฃ๐‘–๐‘ก๐‘ฆ ๐‘œ๐‘“ ๐‘Ž๐‘›๐‘ฆ ๐ธ๐ด ๐‘œ๐‘Ÿ ๐ต๐ด.

Read this blog of Mark Edmeadto learn how you might do that.

Once you've elicitated these capabilities, the big question always is:

"A๐‘›๐‘‘ โ„Ž๐‘œ๐‘ค ๐‘ค๐‘–๐‘™๐‘™ ๐‘กโ„Ž๐‘–๐‘  ๐‘๐‘œ๐‘š๐‘๐‘Ž๐‘›๐‘ฆ ๐‘Ÿ๐‘’๐‘Ž๐‘™๐‘–๐‘ง๐‘’ ๐‘กโ„Ž๐‘’๐‘ ๐‘’ ๐‘๐‘Ž๐‘๐‘Ž๐‘๐‘–๐‘™๐‘–๐‘ก๐‘–๐‘’๐‘  ๐‘–๐‘› ๐‘Ž ๐‘ ๐‘ก๐‘Ÿ๐‘ข๐‘๐‘ก๐‘ข๐‘Ÿ๐‘’๐‘‘, ๐‘’๐‘“๐‘“๐‘’๐‘๐‘ก๐‘–๐‘ฃ๐‘’, ๐‘’๐‘“๐‘“๐‘–๐‘๐‘–๐‘’๐‘›๐‘ก, ๐‘Ž๐‘›๐‘‘ ๐‘ ๐‘ข๐‘ ๐‘ก๐‘Ž๐‘–๐‘›๐‘Ž๐‘๐‘™๐‘’ ๐‘ค๐‘Ž๐‘ฆ, ๐‘‘๐‘’๐‘™๐‘–๐‘ฃ๐‘’๐‘Ÿ๐‘–๐‘›๐‘” ๐‘กโ„Ž๐‘’ ๐‘Ÿ๐‘’๐‘ž๐‘ข๐‘–๐‘Ÿ๐‘’๐‘‘ ๐‘ฃ๐‘Ž๐‘™๐‘ข๐‘’ ๐‘ก๐‘œ ๐‘กโ„Ž๐‘’๐‘–๐‘Ÿ ๐‘๐‘ข๐‘ ๐‘ก๐‘œ๐‘š๐‘’๐‘Ÿ๐‘ ."

The answer to this question is equally - or even more - important. That's why so many companies work ๐›๐จ๐ญ๐ญ๐จ๐ฆ ๐ฎ๐ฉ: they focus on their operating model, without having a clear picture of their capability model.

And then it usually goes wrong. For the past 4 decades, the bottom-up approach has been based on a ๐›๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ-๐ฉ๐ซ๐š๐œ๐ญ๐ข๐œ๐ž ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐š๐ญ๐ž๐ ๐ฒ, adopting the acts of other companies (that claimed to be 'successful') - without having a proper idea of their operating model. This is the failing Yin-Yang of organizations that has been the cause of so much complexity in today's businesses: no proper combination of a capability model and an operating model.

This is especially true in IT. We've been working with practice-based approaches fro decades, and look at the result. People are still explaining each other the difference between an incident and a problem, and between a change request and a service request, and that having a CMDB is crucial - without being able to show a successful example. That's why Forrester can produce very expensive reports on very simple statements like "ditch your ITIL training program - because ITIL doesn't provide an ROI any more" - without producing a simple, affordable alternative. They only come up with a list of other practice-based approaches. We might expect more from a research company...

The good news is that it's actually easy to repair this omission. The USM Method provides the universal management systemfor any team, that can be scaled up to any businesss unit, any organization, any enterprise, any supply chain, and any ecosystem in our economy - as long as it's a service ecosystem.

At the end of the day, all organizations are service providers, regardless of what they produce. [Christian Grรถnroos]

USM's universal service management system provides the concept of the link for your organization, whatever your line of business is, as you are a service provider. This link is the meta model for any operating model of any team, company, or enterprise. If you use it as such, you can build strong businesses and supply chains - without the failing interoperability of modern economy.

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USM acts as the powerful link that you can use to build strong supply chains.

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