Business capabilities are structured in a business capability hierarchy. Before you begin, you should consider which business capabilities are your main business capabilities and which are their subordinate business capabilities. It is recommended that you conceptualize your business capabilities in a hierarchy with at least two levels. The top two levels of business capabilities are analyzed in the context of various business questions in Alfabet FastLane.

Start with the main business capabilities in your company and assign each of these business capabilities a number such as 1, 2, and so on. Next consider the subordinate business capabilities below each top-level business capability and assign a logical numerical system: 1.1, 1.2., 1.3, etc. For example, Market Development, Product Development, and Support and Services would be typical high level business capabilities with Level ID attributes set to 1, 2, and 3 respectively. The business capability Product Development ( Level ID = 2) might have the subordinate business capabilities Product Capability Definition ( Level ID = 2.1), Product Development Planning ( Level ID = 2.2), and Product Design ( Level ID = 2.3).

In the navigation panel, click Business Architecture > Business Capabilities to open the explorer for business capabilities.​

Add a new root-level business capability. Click the root node of the explorer and click New button to open the wizard to create a business capability.

Add a new subordinate business capability. Click the parent business capability in the explorer, go to the Overview tab and open the Sub-Domains view. Click New > Create New Business Capability to open the wizard.

Change the parent of a business capability. In the Sub-Domains view, click New > Move Existing Business Capability Here to open a selector where you can chose the business capability to move to the new parent business capability.

Edit an existing business capability. Select the checkbox   for the business capability you want to edit and click the Edit    button to open the wizard.

Define the business capability's basic data. The Go to Step ​ field displayed at the bottom of the wizard should show Basic Data so that you can capture the mandatory information about the business capability. Define the following fields and click Next to save your data. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the business capability and save it.

• Level ID: (Recommended) Enter a level ID for the business capability in the business capability hierarchy. Each business capability should be assigned a number in the Level ID attribute. The business capabilities will be displayed in alphabetical and numerical order. You can leave this attribute empty at first and assign the level ID to your business capabilities after they have been created.
• Name: (Mandatory) The name of the business capability. The name should capture an abstract description of what is done to meet it the company's business objectives.
• Business Relevance: (Recommended) Indicates how relevant the business capability is for the business.
  • Mission Critical: The business capability is crucial to the organization's business and therefore essential to the accomplishment of the vision, goals and objectives.
  • Business Evolving: The business capability responds to internal and external change and helps to support the necessary steps to transition the organization's business.
  • Business Enabling: The business capability is currently core to the business of the organization and describes what currently exists in the business.
  • Business Operating: The business capability is not unique to the business but does provide the support required to operate the business. Because it is not unique to the business, it does not constitute a core business capability.
• Business Capability Status: (Recommended) Describes the status of the business capability in the company.
  • In Use: The business capability is part of the business portfolio and is enabled by active applications.
  • Suspended: The business capability has been suspended for a short period of time.
  • Terminated: The business capability has been terminated and remains part of the business architecture for archiving purposes.
  • Outsourced: The business capability has been outsourced to an external organization. The external organization provides business capability as services to the organization.
• Description: Provide an explanation about the business capability.

Ideally your company has documented its application. Applications should already be in the repository in order to define the application that supports the business capability. Some business questions in Alfabet FastLane can only be answered if the relationships between applications and business capabilities are defined. application An application is a complete installation of a software offering a functionality to an end user. The application might consist of or require other technical components to run.

Applications support the company to realize its business capabilities. For each business capability, you should specify the applications that support the business capability in order to understand how the business may be at risk due to IT failure.

1. In the navigation panel, click Business Architecture > Business Capabilities to open the data workbench for business capabilities.​
2. Select the checkbox  for the business capability you want to edit and click the Edit    button to open the wizard.
3. Click the Edit button to open the wizard and select Providing Applications in the Go to Step field.
4. Click New > Associate Existing Application with Business Capability. Select the applications that provide support to the business capability and click OK. Click Next in the wizard to save your changes.

An evaluation is a measurement of the performance of an asset. Preconfigured indicator types and possibly custom indicator types added by your company are available to evaluate and are used in various analyses in Alfabet FastLane. Some indicator types are automatically computed by the system and others must be manually defined.

Update computed indicators. Click the Calculate button to update computed indicators via the Calculate button. The indicators will be recalculated based on the current. Please note that computed indicators that are calculated based on the current data.

Select an indicator type and click Edit Indicator or click Group Edit to open a dialog where all indicator types can be edited that are not automatically computed by the system.

Define the asset's indicators. To do so, navigate to the data workbench where the asset is defined:

• Click the Edit button to open the wizard and select Evaluations in the Go to Step field
• In the data table, click the navigate  button of the asset you want to define. Click Overview and scroll to the Evaluations page and open it.

In contrast to the concept of an authorized user or authorized user group which grants read/write permissions to an object, roles which are fulfilled by people or organizations may also be specified for an object. The role definition specifies the functional relationship or responsibility that a user or organization has to an object. The specification of a role is primarily for documentation purposes and provides additional information about stakeholders interested or responsible for the object. A person assigned to have a role for an object will not have read/write permissions based on the role definition. If the user shall have read/write permissions, they must be assigned to an authorized user group specified for the object.

Alfabet FastLane provides out-of-the-box role types that enable you to understand who is responsible for your IT assets in your IT portfolio. Additional role types that are relevant for your company can also be added.

Assigning users and organizations to roles is critical to understanding responsibility for assets in the IT and is required to answer the business question Who is responsible for our assets? 

To define the users and organizations that have a role for an asset, navigate to the data workbench where the asset is defined. You can either:

• Click the Edit button to open the wizard and select Responsibilities in the Go to Step field
• In the data table, click the navigate  button of the asset you want to define. Click Overview and scroll to the Responsibilities page and open it.

Define the users that have a role for an asset. In the toolbar, click Person to associate a user with the asset. The user can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

• Architect: A person who is responsible for the governance of the asset.
• Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
• IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
• Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

In the selector, find the user to assign the role to and click OK.

Define the organizations that have a role for an asset. In the toolbar, click Organization to associate an organization with the asset. The user can have one of the following roles or a custom role added by your company:

• Business Owner: A person or organization that owns the asset and is responsible for managing the functional requirements.
• IT Owner: A person or IT organization that owns the asset and thus typically responsible for approval decisions.
• Operations: An IT organization responsible for the operations of the asset.
• Stakeholder: A person or organization that has an interest in the asset and therefore requires read-only access permissions.

In the selector, find the organization to assign the role to and click OK.

A generic attribute is a custom attribute that allows the ad-hoc capture of information for an asset. An administrator user may have already created predefined custom attributes that are relevant for an object class. The preconfigured generic attribute can be added to an asset (object) of the respective object class. For example, the generic attribute Rationalization Status could be configured to capture whether an application is in the scope of rationalization activities. Thus it would be assigned to the class Application with a default value set to False. As an authorized user of an application, you can add this attribute to your application and change the value if you want to.

You may also create your own generic attributes for an asset you are working with. You can also copy generic attributes created for other assets of the same class as the one you are working with and change the value.

in the context of the Generic Attributes view for the object.

To define a generic attribute for an asset, navigate to the data workbench where the asset is defined. In the data table, click the navigate  button of the asset you want to define. Click Overview and scroll to the Generic Attributes page and open it.

Add a preconfigured generic attribute to the asset. Click New > Add Generic Attributes from Class Configuration. Change the default value in the Value field as needed. The values that may be specified will depend on the type of property defined in the Type field.

Create a new generic attribute for the asset. Click New > Create New Generic Attribute. Define the following fields and click OK:

• Name: Enter a name that is easy for other users to understand.
• Type: Select the type of property that the generic attribute is. The field will display standard property types and enumerations. If you select an enumeration, the enumeration values will be displayed in the Value field.
• Value: Specify the attribute value for the selected object class. The values that may be specified will depend on the type of property defined in the Type field. Other users might copy this attribute. The value you define will be the default value but they will be able to change it for their asset.

Copy an existing generic attribute from an asset based on the same object class. Click New > Copy Existing Generic Attributes. In the selector, select the assets that have the generic attributes you want to copy to your asset and click OK. You can change the value as needed.

You can attach documents to objects in Alfabet FastLane in the Attachments view available in object profiles.

To define a generic attribute for an asset, navigate to the data workbench where the asset is defined. In the data table, click the navigate  button of the asset you want to define. Click Overview and scroll to the Attachments page and open it.

Upload a document to the asset.

Click New > Add Document. Select the file from your local drive and click Upload. The document is displayed in the data table.

Note that when you upload a document, you must ensure that the document is not encrypted. Encryption might be caused by Microsoft™ Information Protection. Only documents with the sensitivity label "Public" can be uploaded. Other reasons for encryption might also apply due to your company's security policies. The following file types are allowed: .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, .pdf, .zip, .png, .jpg, and .json The following file types are not allowed: .exe, .bat, .cmd, .ps1, .txt, .xml, .wsdl, .html, .svg

Add a URL to the asset. You can define a URL for the selected object. The user must have access permissions to the document and have access to the network path specified in the link and, typically, be in the same network domain.

• Title: Enter a meaningful title for the URL link to help users understand why you included this URL with the selected object.
• URL: Enter a valid URL starting with the prefix https://www. or http://www. The URL link may contain up to 511 characters. The user’s Windows® environment must be able to identify the document extension and identify the correct application to open the document. A validation will be executed to ensure that a new URL is well-formatted and does not contain a period <.> without a leading or trailing blank space.

The following browsers support opening the files via the Web link definition in Alfabet FastLane: Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 11.0 and Microsoft® Edge® in conjunction with Windows® 10. Mozilla® Firefox® 24.0 or higher including Mozilla® Firefox® Quantum are also supported but require additional configuration in the browser settings.