What is a Capability?

In the previous post I announced the discovery of a lost tribe of Capability Engineers. Now it's the time to learn what is this thing they engineer - what are Capabilities.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, capability is "the quality or state of being capable", and being capable is either "having attributes (as physical or mental power) required for performance or accomplishment" or " having traits conducive to or features permitting ". Capability is not a thing but the an attribute of a thing, and it means that you can't engineer a capability, but have to engineer something to have the capability.

Organizational Science researchers state that for an organisation to have capabilities amounts to having established organizational routines linked to the organization results. The routines are generative systems comprised of individuals' behavior, cognition, emotions and social context.

The Systems Engineering also had their swing on Capabilities, as more and more organizations prefer to pay for the established capabilities and not for technological systems. Things got muddled because researchers discovered that "capability" has at least eight different meanings when used in the context of equipment design, management corporate and enterprise planning, investment trade-off, service delivery, dynamic response to changes, and systems engineering.

Capabilities contribute to organization services and seem to be realized through Systems-of-Systems made from Systems made from Subsystems, while being also built from diverse components such as people, processes, support services, equipment and infrastructure. If you've noticed some circular logic and internal contradictions, you're not alone.

As you may noticed, capabilities somehow become referred to as things and not attributes, and being described by nouns doesn't help. Let's try to unravel things a bit using a rather mundane example of a carpenter's shop.

A carpenter's shop as an organization is supposed to be capable to build, say, tables. Though, being a prudent customer, you'll want to see some proof that the shop does produce tables of sufficient quality on acceptable schedule before placing an order.

Being capable means routinely producing valuable results, so a Capability is a badge of honor bestowed on an organization for delivering consistently.

Now you may note something peculiar. While we bestow capabilities on successful organizations, we bestow functions on equipment and competencies on people. A carpenter is competent if known to produce quality tables on schedule, and the carpenter's shop equipment is functional if working reliable while producing those tables. Capabilities, functions and competencies are really the same thing!

Now we can wrap it all together. When we say that an organization has a capability, we acknowledge some specific job well done consistently. Consistent delivery requires both collective routines and an ability to regroup and reorganize them around specific job requests. This collective routines combine equipment processes with people personal work routines acknowledged by assigning functions and competencies.