Modeling Enterprise Capabilities with i*: Reasoning on Alternatives

In a dynamic world, information technology (IT) systems are expected to provide capabilities that can be used to address evolving needs. Recent work has adopted notions of capability to model how IT systems meet enterprise goals. In this paper we draw upon theories of dynamic capabilities from strategic management to model enterprise capabilities, reason on their development choices, orchestration alternatives and deployment configurations. The modeling approach builds uponi* and proposes to model capabilities as actors.i* modeling supports reasoning about intangible and tangible requirements of capabilities and trade-offs among alternatives. We illustrate with examples from the insurance industry. The examples show how social and non-functional dependencies among capabilities affect decisions about development, orchestration and configuration alternatives.