The document introduces concepts from variability modeling into capability modeling. It discusses definitions of capabilities, capability meta-models, and variability modeling concepts. An industrial case study of a business process outsourcing company is presented where variability points and aspects are applied. Variation points identify locations of variation in capability models, while variation aspects represent contextual factors. The concepts are formally defined and applied to the industrial case to demonstrate how variability modeling can enhance flexibility in capability models. Future work to further develop and validate the approach is discussed.

1. On the Applicability of Concepts from Variability Modelling in Capability Modelling:
Experiences from a Case in Business Process Outsourcing
Chair of Business Information Systems
Kurt Sandkuhl, Hasan Koç
{kurt.sandkuhl, hasan.koc}@uni-rostock.de

2. Agenda
• Motivation
• Background
– Capability Definitions and Meta-Models
– Variability Modeling
• Industrial Case
• Variation Points and Variation Aspects
– Concepts and Formalization
– Application in the Industrial Case
• Summary & Future Work
2

3. Motivation
• There is much experience in industries developing complex systems
how to deal with variability
– Can we learn from it for capability management?
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• Changing market environments, customer demands and regulatory requirements
– The capabilities of an enterprise have to be continuously adapted
– requires continuous development of business services and underlying
technical components / services
– flexibility, dynamics and variation are attributes associated with capability
• Our aim: to introduce concepts from variability modeling (variation points and
variation aspects) into modelling and representation of capabilities.

4. Agenda
• Motivation
• Background
– Capability Definitions and Meta-Models
– Variability Modeling
• Industrial Case
• Variation Points and Variation Aspects
– Concepts and Formalization
– Application in the Industrial Case
• Summary & Future Work
4

5. Capability Definitions
• Many definitions exist in the literature; no generally accepted definition available
– “combination of resources” [Antunes, Barateiro, Becker 2011]
– “capacity to execute an activity”[Jiang, Zhao 2010]
– “perform better than competitors” [Boonpattarakan 2010]
– “possessed ability” [TOGAF 2014]
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• Several papers suggest that capabilities are provided as Business Services, i.e. they
are designed and delivered in a process-oriented fashion
• EU-FP7 project Capabilities-as-a-Service in Digital Enterprises (CaaS):
– “Capability is the ability and capacity that enable an enterprise to achieve a
business goal in a certain context.”

6. Capability Meta-Model
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Source:
Zdravkovic J, Stirna J, Henkel M et al. (2013) Modeling Business Capabilities and Context Dependent Delivery
by Cloud Services. In: Hutchison D, Kanade T, Kittler J et al. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering,
LNCS vol 7908. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 369–383

7. Capability Meta-Model: Excerpt
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Meta-Model needs further specification to avoid
ambiguities
Example:
• Capability is supported by exactly one Pattern.
Each Pattern is an aggregation of
ProcessVariants. which in turn are specializations
of Process.
• What is the relation of the ProcessVariants of the
Processes required for a Capability and the
ProcessVariants aggregated in the one Pattern
supporting a Capability?
• 1st interpretation: all ProcessVariants of all
Processes required by a Capability have to be
aggregated in the one Pattern required by the
Capability
• 2nd interpretation: only selected ProcessVariants
or only one ProcessVariant per Process would be
part of the one Pattern for a Capability.

8. Variability Modeling in Product Line Engineering
• Variability modeling is common practice in technical systems and as element of
software product line implementations
• Objective:
– limit the variety of the variants of systems by capturing and visualizing
commonalities and dependencies between features and between the
components providing feature implementations
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• Feature models
– extract, structure and visualize the commonality and variability of a domain or
set of products
– Commonalities are the properties of products that are shared among all the
products in a set, placing the products in the same category or family.
– Variability are the elements of the products that differentiate and show the
configuration options, choices and variation points that are possible between
variants of the product, aimed to satisfy customer needs and requirements.

9. 9
Feature Modeling
Source: Jang-Hwan Kwon (2003) A Feature Model of the Orcale 9i Database Server.
Master thesis, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. April 2003.
Relation types
• Mandatory
• Optional
• Alternative
• Required
• Mutually-exclusive
Example:
Analog wristwatch

10. Agenda
• Motivation
• Background
– Capability Definitions and Meta-Models
– Variability Modeling
• Industrial Case
• Variation Points and Variation Aspects
– Concepts and Formalization
– Application in the Industrial Case
• Summary & Future Work
10

11. Industrial Case:
Business Process Ooutsourcing of Energy Distribution Companies
• SIV.AG from Rostock Germany
• Independent Software Vendor (ISV) for utilities industry
• Owns business process outsourcing (BPO) service supplier to support customers
running kVASy®
• BPO has to offer and implement solutions for different cases
• Variations in business processes due to different factors:
– Configurations and adjustments for the organization
– Country of use; regulations and bylaws
– Contractual specifications
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12. Business Service MSCONS
Global Perspective
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• Transmission of energy consumption data from one market role to another role
• Data is sent by mail, it complies with UN/EDIFACT Standard
• National variants of EDIFACT Standard also exist
• EDIFACT is subject to periodical change by regulatory authorities

13. Business Service MSCONS
Local Perspective
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Message Validation Message Processing

14. Agenda
• Motivation
• Background
– Capability Definitions and Meta-Models
– Variability Modeling
• Industrial Case
• Variation Points and Variation Aspects
– Concepts and Formalization
– Application in the Industrial Case
• Summary & Future Work
15

15. Variation Point and Variation Aspects in Capability Models
• Basic idea: identify those aspects in business services of an enterprises where
alternative flows, functions or procedures are possible and to identify cause and
type of variations
– variation aspects: the cause of variations
– variation points: the locations of the variations in the business service model.
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• variation aspects
– correspond to context elements
– can be relevant for different business services and at different positions in the
business service model
• variation point
– identifies the business service model element where a variation with respect
to a specific variation aspect occurs.

16. Variation Aspects and Variation Points: Formalization (1)
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17. Variation Aspects and Variation Points: Formalization (2)
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18. Variation Aspects and Variation Points: Formalization (2)
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19. Context of Business Service Delivery
• The execution of message validation processes depends on several
context elements
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20. Variation Aspects and Variation Points in the Industrial Case
21
Variation Point
Process Variants
Patterns
Variation
Aspects

21. Agenda
• Motivation
• Background
– Capability Definitions and Meta-Models
– Variability Modeling
• Industrial Case
• Variation Points and Variation Aspects
– Concepts and Formalization
– Application in the Industrial Case
• Summary & Future Work
22

22. Discussion
Use of Feature Modeling constructs in Capability Modeling
• Concepts from feature modelling in principle can be transferred to capability
modelling
• Variation aspects, which in feature modelling are the characteristics deciding about
mandatory, optional, mutually-exclusive or required features correspond to context
elements in capability modelling
• variation points in feature models are the different feature nodes which
corresponds to business service model elements in capability models,
• the utility of variant hierarchies from feature modelling intuitively makes sense, but
still has to be investigated in capability modelling
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23. Discussion (2)
Further formalization of the meta-model
• formalization of the relations between context, process, pattern, variant and
capability resolves some of the ambiguities in the meta-model, but not all of them
• definition of operational semantics still is required if capability models are meant to
transformed to executable or enactable representations
• Although the formalization does not assume a process-oriented perspective on
business services, the practical use with other business service representations will
have to be investigated in future work
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24. Summary and Future Work
Main contributions of this paper:
• introduction of variability points into capability modelling,
• proposal for further formalizing the term capability,
• an industrial case showing the use of variability points.
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Future Work
• variation aspects currently are modelled in a process-centred way. In the future,
other paradigms such as service-oriented-architectures should be investigated
• specify or extend the formal capability definition to emphasize the semantics of
associations between the capability components