When we talk about resources and capabilities and think about the organisation and the processes, we really think about the actual people and knowledge. We also look at what people do to deliver these services and what they need to deliver the service. Ask ourselves the question, what are their skill sets? How can we monitor and manage these? Do we need additional training?
A resource is any physical or virtual entity of limited availability, or anything used to support future development and sustainability. Resources are useful entities and so we attach value to them. In ITIL, we work with resources a lot. We need to know which resources an organisation contains and the value to the business as a whole. When we design services, we think in terms of resources and ascertain risks when certain resources are not available. Resources can be introduced to an organisation such as by taking on new staff and attending training.
When we think about resources in ITIL, we also consider the availability. How readily available are these resources? The value of the resource is also important. This can easily be determined from the need for the resources or more commonly known as the demand. As you might expect, a resource which is more in demand holds a higher value potential. Creating an efficient service usually requires obtaining valuable resources.
Resources are not immutable; they change, improve or degrade. A resource such as key personnel can be changed hence increasing the value of the resource. A resource such as a server, may degrade as time passes e.g. the operating system may come out of support.
Some resources do not come 'packaged' ready for use. Using resource development, we can influence resources in order to change them into more usable commodities.
Capability, what we think of as the ability to perform actions or the expertise. We use gap analysis to identify the capabilities that do not exist yet to perform a particular function or process. Capabilities are usually accompanied by an intention, but not always.