Architecting Enterprise Capabilities: Creating Dynamic Capabilities from IT and Software Architecture

In this fast-paced world, enterprises are facing increasing difficulties to sustain competitive advantage. The dynamic capability view (DCV) in strategic management suggests that the ability to continuously create valuable and rare capabilities is the basis for competitiveness in rapidly changing environments. Flexible information technology (IT) capabilities that are aligned to enterprise capabilities and which can facilitate agile operation and decision making play a fundamental role in dynamic capabilities. In this paper we outline a vision of architecting enterprise capabilities building upon the i* modeling framework to facilitate design of more flexible and adaptive IT capabilities. We discuss how the proposed modeling framework facilitates reasoning on capability development, orchestration and deployment alternatives considering nonfunctional requirements with flexibility as a fundamental concern.