This document provides guidance on how to build a business capability map for strategic planning purposes. It explains that a business capability map creates a shared understanding of an organization's capabilities based on its priorities and architecture. The document then defines what a business capability is and how a map differs from a framework. It offers tips for defining capabilities, such as considering current and future states, ensuring capabilities are stable, and decomposing them cohesively. Finally, it discusses different approaches to building a map and provides steps for structuring and organizing the map, along with tenets for effective planning.

1. Business
Capability
Map
How to build one for
strategic planning

2. Why use a map?
Strategy and execution aren’t always as close you think.
Business capability mapping creates a shared source of truth
based on the CEO’s priorities, or the big picture. Capabilities
visually display the essence of business architecture in a way
that all stakeholders can understand.

3. What is a business capability map?
A business capability defines the tasks, systems and processes
that must occur for a business to meet its goals. A business
capability map or model is a visual display of the structure and
hierarchy of an organisation’s defined capabilities.

4. Map vs framework
A business capability map does not provide any nuance beyond
naming a capability and relaying its hierarchical position.
A capability framework provides levels of competency for the
purposes of performance development, workforce planning and
strategic L&D.

5. Defining
Capabilities

6. Consider Current/Future State
Business capabilities should also describe what you have the
potential to do. If you’re looking at 3, 5, 10-year plans,
consider what capabilities will get you to those goals.

8. Think Evergreen
Business capabilities should be as stable as possible. If a
capability would change if you split up a department, it’s not
a true capability.

9. Decompose Cohesively
When creating levels of sub-capabilities under your core
capabilities, you want to think about the business criteria
that will make the most sense internally.

10. Map
Building
Approaches

11. Straw-based
Involves starting from scratch and building your map based on internal data.
Whiteboard
Look to industry trends and examples to shape a business capability map around
customer needs.

12. Top-down
Senior stakeholders help define the highest level of capabilities, each of which is
decomposed into more detailed levels.
Bottom-up
Business capabilities are defined at the task level.

13. Structuring &
Organising
Your Map

14. 1) Organise Capability Groups
Capabilities defined at this level must be as absolute as you
can make them.
An objective view means to segment capabilities by their
impact on specific strategic outcomes. A value-chain based
view looks at the chains of activities that contribute to said
strategic outcomes.

15. 2) Define sub-capabilities
Sub-capabilities provide several functions, from offering
nuance for organising teams to showing the chain of
necessary tasks in a value stream. You don’t necessarily
need to have the same number of sub-capabilities under
each core capability or capability group.

17. 3) Decompose sub-capabilities
This is mostly seen in larger companies with complex
business structures. Sub-capabilities will have their own
further decomposition. This level will likely be the most
iterative, but it’ll also give you the most insight for activities
like heatmapping and capability prioritisation.

19. Tenets of
Good
Planning

20. Involve your business or
enterprise architects from
the start
Make it cross-functional;
this isn’t just a HR or CEO
exercise project
Plan for iterative
refinement over time
The simpler the better –
use plain business terms
Make capabilities mutually
exclusive and collectively
exhaustive
Remember that your
organisation owns these
capabilities. What makes you
different from competitors in
that regard?

21. You can learn more about this
topic by checking out the full
article:
https://acornlms.com/enterprise-learning-
management/business-capability-map