The essential characteristics of capabilities
Capability is not just the power to act, but the wisdom to choose, the skill to execute, and the resilience to adapt.
A capability is defined as that which provides an ability to achieve a desired effect under specified standards and conditions. Such effects must be observable through changes to the resources that are produced and consumed while performing a defined set of activities. These activities collectively adopt courses of action which provide the structure for performers to pursue individual goals and - in concert with others - contribute to making the world a better place.
Different architectural frameworks have different interpretations of the concept of a capability. For example, the TOGAF framework uses the word to delineate business capabilities for architectures without prescribing how such capabilities might be achieved. The framework uses the concept of 'capability increments' as building blocks that are essential to capability planning, but remains silent about the means of developing, enhancing, and delivering the necessary capabilities, expecting other governance instruments to provide such methods. As a result, when either underlying governance is limited, ambiguous, or inconsistently applied, it can prove difficult to diagnose and resolve problems of performance which may be hidden by the abstract idea of a capability itself.
In contrast, the DODAF framework adopts a more specific meaning for the concept of a capability - that depicted in figure 1. This representation is notable in its modeling of resources as abstractions of information, material, and performers. Not to get too philosophical here, but effective considerations of architectures that promise enabling, enhancing, or extending underlying capabilities must be grounded in an understanding of the various systems of interest's variety, pragmatics, and mereology, as well as the praxis of its production. Such an analysis is far more complicated than Figure 1 implies.
A capability is indeed enacted by performers as they perform activities which consume materiel, resources, and time and produce transformations. The agents implementing these activities, at least in this telling, are called performers in DoD lingo, and agents in most settings today, and can consist of a complicated mix of systems, services, organizations, and individuals assigned to roles. Projects are expected to employ the agents that demonstrate fitness for these assignments, though often they have little freedom to delay waiting to discover and attract their contributions.
Within the DODAF framework, these activities achieve progress by facilitating transformations from one state to another. These agents are expected to follow guidance sufficient to enable them to competently perform these activities and produce acceptable outcomes under specified conditions. Guidance typically introduces constraints which attempt to limit anomalous behaviors. This guidance is provided in many forms, such as rules, standards, and agreements. An important example of such constraints deserves special attention since activities are performed at physical locations, requiring use of resources that are available at those locations.
Information and competency are essential ingredients for performing these activities in each unique context. Unfortunately, performers are often expected to achieve target outcomes under conditions that are less than ideal. For example, agents may have little precedent or practical experience base to draw upon. Such conditions will impact the achievement of the target outcomes, even though such situations may not be immediately apparent. When flexibility is available which tolerates cycles of iteration to achieve these outcomes, progress can still be achieved, though performance may disappoint.
Modeling of capability evolution over time - strategically, tactically, and operationally - should synthesize information from available sources and present it in a form suitable for use by these performers. Viewpoints can be used to produce thematic collections of this information that focus attention on a particular scope of concerns of these performers. As such, these models should incorporate architectural data using combinations of diagrams, pictures, narrative text, matrices, tables, and dashboards.
Since this information will be essential to shape capabilities and their resources over time, a selected set of viewpoints should be adopted to facilitate these decisions and minimize the rework across the broader communities of interest. These viewpoint definitions should highlight the entities each capabilities produce and consume and must be adequate to realize coherent and effective operations across all performers engaging with the capability overall.
Changes (as shown in Figure 2) are ever-present in the pursuit of each capability's target outcomes. Such changes include intentional modifications to a system of interest's state that result from informed decisions, changes introduced by the environment, and changes necessary to correct or adjust some limitation in the system. In each of these situations, system of interest transitions from one configuration to another through transforming activities which realize this state change over time. Progress is demonstrated by assuring that the value of the system of interest is greater in State B than in State A.
The resources necessary to develop and exploit a capability thus depend upon many factors, including the environment, the fitness and stability of the systems of interest, and the scenarios under which value can be extracted under the immediate and anticipated circumstances. This is particularly relevant when a capability's evolution requires changes to the beliefs and values of the performers themselves. These emotional and cognitive needs are of particular concern since they will be expected to diagnose unfamiliar situations, properly infer meaning form these situations, formulate appropriate intentions in response, and translate those intentions into meaningful and appropriate courses of action. The unfortunate alternative is to abandon the intended purposes of the capability and live with the consequences.