In response to a recent post I did on Function vs Functionality, I received a comment from Dennis Stevens at www.dennisstevens.com in which he said:
“For about the last decade I have been using Capabilities to be what you are calling Function here. A capability is something a business does – regardless of how they do it. The nice part of Capability is that it doesn’t change, even when the implementation changes. Capabilities help you overcome the “How Trap” when eliciting requirements, when planning systems releases, and when performing organizational improvements and designs.”
My response to Dennis was:
I also use the term “Capability” but in a different way to the definition you gave. What a business does (more precisely what it OUGHT to do), regardless of the how it does it, I define as a Business Function. The different means by which a Function may be performed, I call “Mechanisms”. An example of this would be the Function “Accept Customer Order”. This could be carried out over the telephone, via fax or as an online transaction, i.e. three different Mechanisms for one Function. I align Capability with the standard English meaning of the word, i.e. what an enterprise is capable of doing and, in this sense, as with the title of your HBR article (which Dennis mentioned later in his comment), it may be associated with productivity. Capability couples a Function with elements that increase its depth, scope, productivity, etc. These elements could include knowledge, skills, technology, product portfolio, geography, and many others.
When talking to the executives of enterprise that want to grow Capability in a certain area, I ask a series of stepped questions beginning with the words:
“Are you currently capable of.. ”.
An example, is an insurance company that wanted to sell insurance products online throughout the US.
The first question asked was, “Are you currently capable of selling insurance products?”
The answer was “yes”, so no problem.
The next question was, “Are you currently capable of selling insurance products in all states?”
Now the answer was “no”, because the Enterprise did not have a licence for particular states. The solution was to obtain these licences.
The next question was, “Are you currently capable of selling insurance products online?”
Again, the answer was “no”, because their systems did not enable them to do this.
This enterprise was able to perform the Function “Sell Insurance Product”, but it did not have the Capability to sell in all states nor did they have the Capability to sell online. Two separate initiatives were put in place to provide this Capability.
This shows is how Capability is essentially different to Function.
Other posts on Capability are: Does Capability Equate to Process? and Capability vs Requirement
