The DVMS ZX Model – The Minimum Viable Business Capabilities that Power the DVMS-CPD Overlay System
Rick Lemieux – Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of the DVMS Institute
As presented in the DVMS Institute’s publications, the ZX Model is a structural visualization and operational strategy embedded within the Digital Value Management System (DVMS) overlay. This model represents a system-of-systems framework that equips organizations with the capability to navigate digital complexity and achieve cyber resilience by enabling the concurrent creation, protection, and delivery of digital business value.
The ZX Model: A Systemic Approach To Digital Business Operations
The ZX Model (often stylized as the Z-X Model) lies at the core of DVMS and represents the seven Minimum Viable Capabilities (MVCs) every organization must embody to function effectively in the digital landscape. The model is structured visually and reflects its systemic nature—its Z shape represents interconnected capabilities, and the X represents integration points across strategic and operational domains.
Each capability in the model encapsulates key operational dimensions of an organization, collectively ensuring that the organization is strategically aligned and operationally resilient. These capabilities are:
- Govern (GO) – Establishes the rules, policies, and boundaries of “how we conduct business.” It sets strategic direction, risk tolerance, and performance expectations through policy cascades that link boardroom intent to frontline execution.
- Assure (AS) – Ensures the right things are done correctly. This capability focuses on oversight, conformance to governance, and the feedback systems that validate outcomes and performance against expectations.
- Plan (PL)—This encompasses strategy formulation and tactical planning. It ensures that the organization can craft responsive strategies, aligning its goals and resources in anticipation of changes in its internal or external environment.
- Design (DE) – Orchestrates the structures, processes, and tools needed to implement the plans. It embodies the organization’s ability to experiment, innovate, and structure value creation and protection mechanisms.
- Change (CH) – Manages transitions within the organization. Whether introducing new technologies, policies, or behaviors, Change ensures adaptability by reducing resistance and embedding resilience.
- Execute (EX) – Delivers on the planned activities. It includes the processes and workflows that create, protect, and deliver value. Execution is where governance and planning are translated into action.
- Innovate (IN) – Pushes the boundaries of value creation through four lenses of innovation: incremental, sustaining, adaptive, and disruptive. This ensures the organization continually evolves and remains relevant in dynamic environments.
Together, these capabilities form the structure and behavior of a resilient organization. They offer a way to design organizational functions by recognizing that real performance and adaptability come not from isolated departments but from how their parts work together as a coherent whole.
Minimum Viable Capabilities (MVCs): Operational Implications
The term Minimum Viable Capabilities doesn’t imply minimal effort or lightweight activity. Rather, it designates the baseline competencies that must be in place for any organization, regardless of size, scale, or complexity, to function effectively and responsibly in today’s multi-vendor, risk-laden digital world.
Here’s a breakdown of what each capability entails in practice:
- Govern: Drives a culture of accountability. Policy cascades ensure everyone understands their role in risk management and performance expectations. Governance connects the boardroom’s strategic objectives with operational realities.
- Assure: Builds trust internally and externally. This capability enables internal audits, reviews, and performance monitoring. It closes the feedback loop between expected and actual results.
- Plan: Provides foresight. It allows organizations to allocate resources effectively, scenario-plan for crises, and align short-term actions with long-term goals.
- Design encourages systemic thinking. It integrates innovation, usability, and security into workflows, promoting functional and sustainable solutions.
- Change: Operationalizes adaptability. Whether it’s process reengineering or cultural transformation, the Change capability ensures disruptions are managed intentionally rather than reactively.
- Execute: Anchors delivery. It includes everything from service operations to customer support, ensuring the business meets its obligations and promises.
- Innovate: Embeds a learning culture. It encourages experimentation and celebrates curiosity as a strategic asset, enabling the organization to pivot when needed without losing focus.
Strategic Integration: From Overlay to Execution
A unique strength of the ZX Model is its overlay nature. It is not designed to replace existing frameworks or methods, like ITIL, COBIT, or ISO, but to integrate them into a coherent system that closes gaps between strategic goals and operational activities. This makes the ZX Model agnostic, allowing organizations to apply it atop their current systems while exposing performance and resilience gaps that otherwise go undetected.
By doing so, the model helps organizations:
- See and manage their whole system rather than just departmental fragments.
- Shift from a “create then protect” to a “create and protect” mode of operation.
- Understand and manage strategy-risk—the combination of value creation intent with risk-aware governance.
- Adopt adaptive working methods that are resilient to threats and aligned with opportunities.
Conclusion
The ZX Model is a cornerstone of the DVMS Institute’s approach to managing digital business risk. It provides a practical, systems-based approach for organizations to integrate strategic governance, operational assurance, adaptive planning, and innovation into a unified capability set. Far from being theoretical, it serves as a hands-on guide to achieving cyber operational resilience—not by merely deploying technical controls but by orchestrating the entire enterprise in pursuit of secure, sustainable value delivery. When applied rigorously, the ZX Model becomes more than just a model; it becomes a mindset.
About the Author
Rick Lemieux
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of the DVMS Institute
Rick has 40+ years of passion and experience creating solutions to give organizations a competitive edge in their service markets. In 2015, Rick was identified as one of the top five IT Entrepreneurs in the State of Rhode Island by the TECH 10 awards for developing innovative training and mentoring solutions for boards, senior executives, and operational stakeholders.
The DVMS Institute’s NIST Cybersecurity Framework Digital Value Management System® Certified Training and Assessment Programs teach enterprises the skills to build a holistic, culture-powered overlay system for Adaptive Cyber Operational Resilience.
The NIST-CSF-DVMS overlay system is a strategic, enterprise-wide operating system and Cultural Imperative that equips Leadership and Frontline Employees with the skills and Business Capabilities to create, protect, and deliver trusted and resilient digital business outcomes.
Enabling cyber operational resilience requires a coordinated, system-wide effort across the complex, multi-vendor systems and teams that drive an organizations Strategy, Governance, and Operational business layers.
The NIST-CSF-DVMS Create, Protect and Deliver (CPD) and 3D Knowledge Models operationalize this effort using a practical and structured approach to align workflow, communication, innovation, and feedback at the strategy, governance, and operational levels. This unique approach ensures resilient, adaptive, and continuously improving cybersecurity operations despite ongoing digital business disruption.
The NIST-CSF-DVMS approach to Adaptive Cyber Operational Resilience also enables enterprises to comply with any government-mandated cybersecurity regulation (SEC, DORA, NIS2, etc.) or maturity model program (SCF, HITRUST, CMMC, etc.).
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