One of the biggest challenges for IT is to fulfill both its cost-efficiency purpose and its responsibility for digital transformation. The crux of the matter is determining which aspects of the business lend themselves to operational efficiency and which ones
enable digital innovation. To carry out this strategic segmentation for all core functions, processes and requirements of an entire corporation, organizations can leverage business capabilities as structuring elements.
As digital transformation aims at innovation or at least differentiation, all business capabilities that contain significant potential for competitive advantages should be the main focus for digital value creation. Vice versa, regarding optimization and efficiency increases, IT must target industry-wide standard capabilities or other common elements, that have little differentiating aspects.
Once differentiating and innovating business capabilities are identified, a software engineering strategy must facilitate digital value creation with high speed, quality, and agility. Therefore, the following fundamental principles can serve as a rough guide and lay the foundation for individual adjustments, resulting in a customized software engineering strategy.