Monthly Archives: September 2011
Patterns – More than Mere Stencils
Last Thursday I made a presentation on patterns to the local Canberra Enterprise Architect User Group. The presentation showed what patterns were and how they could be used within Enterprise Architect. The slides aren’t designed to stand on their own, but I thought I’d post them on my blog nonetheless. A quick note of acknowledgement all the slides to do with business architecture come from pictures posted by Tom Graves on his blog.
The Parable of the Soup Spoon – A Practical Example of Capabilities
This post builds on my previous post on capabilities with a parable about a soup spoon. When I was in the middle of composing my last post on capabilities, I attempted to explain some of the concepts to my fiancée as we were having lunch in a Vietnamese restaurant. As I searched around for relateable metaphors, my soup spoon caught my eyes.
Recall how a capability two aspects: possession and realisation, as illustrated below?
| Possessed | Not Possessed | |
|---|---|---|
| Realised | Organisation has capability and is using it to generate value. | Competitor has capability, threat for organisation in focus. |
| Not Realised | Organisation has capability, hasn’t assigned resources to it in order to generate value. | Organisation has identified capability as crucial to generating value in the future. |
Let’s apply these two aspects to the soup spoon. For the sake of this example, we have to set some parameters. Obviously the value to be gained from using a soup spoon is eating. Assume that the only way to get food to the mouth, to eat, is via a soup spoon.
| Possessed | Not Possessed | |
|---|---|---|
| Realised | Own the soup spoon and using it to eat | Competitor using soup spoon to eat. |
| Not Realised | Own the soup spoon and not using it to eat. | Has a need for a soup spoon. Probably because there’s a hot bowl of soup in front of them “Hey waiter, can I have a spoon?”. |
My fiancée brought up a good point as I explained this. You require capabilities to build capabilities. A soup spoon can’t materialise out of thin air, it has to be manufactured and then subsequently brought to you by the wait staff.
