Getting started with Capability Based Planning

The Capability Health Check enables organizations to systematically evaluate business capability quality across four critical dimensions: People, Process, Technology, and Data (PPTD). By assessing up to 16 quality requirements and calculating exposure scores (Importance × Level of Concern), organizations can identify quality gaps, prioritize improvement efforts, and create targeted Capability Deltas that drive measurable improvement.

This solution helps you understand what is affecting capability performance before deciding which capabilities to prioritize based on strategic objectives.

Your first step is to deploy the Solution by selecting it from the dropdown list of Solution on the Ardoq Solutions page and hitting the Add solution materials button. This will deploy the Solution to your organization, including all the relevant assets.

The Solution uses the PPTD Framework as a quality model against which the performance of business capabilities is assessed.

This Framework needs to be present in the Quality Models workspace before you can begin using the Solution. If you haven’t already added this to your organization, you should follow these steps now:

As soon as the two calculated fields have their values, you are ready to make a start with the Capability Based Planning Solution by conducting your first Capability Health Check. The rest of this guide provides general guidance to ensure that you obtain maximum value from your use of the Solution.

Successful Capability Health Check adoption follows a proven progression that builds organizational capability, demonstrates value, and establishes sustainable practices. This phased approach manages risk by starting small, validates the methodology in your specific context, and creates internal champions who support broader rollout. Resist the temptation to launch enterprise-wide immediately; organizations that invest in foundational phases achieve significantly higher long-term adoption and impact.

The pilot phase establishes proof of concept and builds foundational competence with the Capability Health Check methodology. Select one or two capabilities that are strategically important enough to warrant attention but manageable enough to allow learning without excessive pressure. Ideal pilot candidates have engaged stakeholders willing to participate in workshops, visible quality concerns that assessment can surface, and improvement opportunities that can demonstrate value within a reasonable timeframe.

During this phase, focus on mastering the assessment process: facilitating effective workshops, achieving genuine stakeholder consensus on scoring, capturing meaningful rationale, and creating well-defined Capability Deltas. Document lessons learned about what works in your organizational context, including optimal workshop duration, effective facilitation techniques, and stakeholder communication approaches. Success in the pilot phase is measured not just by assessment completion but by stakeholder satisfaction with the process and early evidence that identified improvements are progressing.

The expansion phase applies validated practices to a broader set of capabilities while establishing repeatable processes and supporting assets. Select additional capabilities based on pilot learnings, prioritizing those with high strategic importance, known performance challenges, or upcoming investment decisions that assessment findings could inform. This phase tests whether pilot success was context-specific or represents a scalable approach.

Focus on standardization during expansion: create workshop templates, develop facilitator guides, establish scoring calibration practices, and build visualization assets that communicate findings effectively. Train additional facilitators to reduce dependency on pilot participants and build organizational capacity. Refine integration with Strategy to Execution to ensure Capability Deltas flow smoothly into initiative planning. By the end of this phase, you should have documented processes, trained personnel, and demonstrated results that support the case for enterprise-wide adoption.

The scaling phase embeds Capability Health Check into regular capability management practices across the organization. Establish assessment schedules aligned with planning cycles, define governance for prioritizing which capabilities receive assessment attention, and integrate Health Check findings into investment decision processes. This phase transforms Capability Health Check from a project into an ongoing organizational capability.

At scale, focus on efficiency and sustainability: leverage surveys and broadcasts to streamline data collection, build dashboards that surface assessment status and findings to leadership, and establish review cadences that maintain momentum without creating administrative burden. Connect assessment programs to organizational performance metrics to demonstrate ongoing value and secure continued investment. Mature implementations establish feedback loops where assessment insights inform capability strategy and improvement results validate methodology effectiveness, creating a continuous improvement cycle for both capabilities and the assessment process itself.

The Capability Health Check process follows a structured sequence designed to ensure clarity, collaboration, and actionable outcomes.

With this step, the focus area is chosen based on strategic, performance, change, or scheduled triggers such as a maturity assessment.

Every Capability Health Check begins by identifying which business capability requires evaluation. When selecting capabilities, consider strategic triggers (capabilities critical to upcoming initiatives), performance triggers (capabilities showing signs of underperformance), change triggers (capabilities affected by organizational transformation), or scheduled triggers (capabilities due for periodic reassessment). Capture the rationale for conducting the assessment in the component's Concern field, providing context that helps stakeholders understand why this capability warrants attention and what questions the assessment should answer.

Metadata Captured:

Capability Maturity and Market Differentiation Scores

Capability Maturity Assessment scores as an indication of target for assessment

Choose a balanced group of stakeholders is selected across the People, Process, Technology, and Data dimensions to ensure diverse perspectives.

Effective assessment requires input from stakeholders who collectively understand the capability across all four PPTD dimensions. Ardoq identifies relevant experts through existing "Is Expert In" references linking people to capabilities, automatically surfacing individuals with documented expertise. Where these references don't exist, the assessment process provides an opportunity to establish them, building organizational knowledge about who understands what.

When selecting experts, ensure representation across People, Process, Technology and Data perspectives. Include both those who work within the capability daily and those who depend on its outputs. Confirm availability for the collaborative workshop, as the methodology's value depends on bringing diverse perspectives together in real-time discussion rather than collecting isolated individual responses.

Communicate the assessment purpose and share quality requirement definitions in advance so participants arrive prepared to contribute meaningfully.

Selection Criteria:

• Ensure representation across all four PPTD dimensions

• Include both operational and strategic perspectives

• Confirm availability for collaborative workshop

To commence this step, facilitators gather supporting materials, share scoring rubrics, and send pre-workshop instructions to ensure participants are aligned and ready to contribute meaningfully. Facilitators need to decide whether the Health Check will consider each of the four dimensions (People, Process, Technology, Data) in detail, providing scores for each sub-characteristic of each dimension, or simply agree overall scores for each dimension. This decision determines whether the Lite or Full survey is completed during the forthcoming workshop.

The workshop is where assessment value is created through structured, facilitated discussion that builds shared understanding and achieves genuine consensus. In Ardoq, this is implemented through the Capability Health Check survey (either Lite or Full version depending on assessment depth required), which guides participants through systematic evaluation of each quality requirement.

Action: Complete the New Capability Health Check survey for all quality requirements

For Each Requirement:

Begin each requirement evaluation by establishing how critical this quality characteristic is to the capability's success. The facilitator should read the requirement definition aloud, ensuring all participants share a common understanding of what is being assessed. Encourage stakeholders to consider the question: "If this characteristic were completely absent or failing, could we still deliver capability outcomes effectively?" The harder it is to answer "yes," the higher the importance score should be.

Draw out paused problems. Work toward genuine consensus rather than averaging individual scores; if participants disagree, explore the underlying reasoning to reach shared understanding. Document the agreed importance score and note any significant discussion points that informed the rating.

With importance established, shift focus to evaluating current performance against this requirement. The guiding question becomes: "How much is the current state of this characteristic hindering our capability performance?" The more it is actively causing problems or creating barriers, the higher the concern score should be. Importantly, low concern indicates strong performance (a capability strength), not lack of importance.

This discussion often generates more debate than importance scoring because it requires honest assessment of current shortcomings. Create psychological safety for participants to voice concerns without fear of blame or defensiveness. Encourage evidence-based evaluation by asking for specific examples: recent incidents, recurring complaints, workarounds staff have developed, or metrics that indicate performance gaps. Balance perspectives from those who work within the capability (who see daily friction) with those who consume its outputs (who experience downstream impacts). Again, seek genuine consensus rather than compromise, as meaningful disagreement often reveals important insights about where perceptions differ across the organization.

The scores alone don't tell the full story; the reasoning behind them proves invaluable when translating findings into improvement actions. For each requirement, document the key points that shaped scoring decisions: specific incidents mentioned, metrics referenced, examples of impact, areas of stakeholder agreement and any notable differences in perspective.

Record concrete examples that illustrate why concern is high or low, as these provide the evidence base for building improvement business cases. Note any dependencies or connections participants identified between this requirement and others, as these interdependencies inform improvement sequencing. Capture dissenting views even when consensus was reached, as minority perspectives may prove prescient. This documentation serves multiple purposes: it enables initiative planners to understand context without re-engaging all workshop participants, it provides an audit trail for scoring decisions, and it creates institutional memory that informs future reassessments.

Once Importance and Level of Concern are entered and the survey has been submitted, Ardoq automatically calculates the Exposure score by multiplying these values (Importance × Level of Concern), producing a result on a 1.0 to 25.0 scale. This calculation transforms two subjective assessments into a single prioritization metric that quantifies the severity of each quality gap.

The mathematical approach eliminates debates about which concerns should receive attention first; high importance combined with high concern produces high exposure, objectively identifying critical priorities. Display exposure scores to workshop participants as each requirement is completed, building a visible picture of where the most significant gaps are emerging. This real-time feedback often prompts valuable discussion as participants see patterns develop and can validate whether the quantified priorities align with their intuitive understanding of capability challenges. By the workshop's conclusion, the ranked exposure scores provide a clear, defensible prioritization that reflects collective stakeholder judgment.

Workshop Duration: Typically 90-120 minutes for comprehensive assessment

In this step, the results are analyzed and prioritized based on the exposure scores.

With scoring complete, the focus shifts to interpreting findings and identifying where action is needed. Ardoq's visualization capabilities transform raw scores into actionable insights: exposure rankings reveal which quality requirements demand immediate attention, dimensional analysis shows whether concerns concentrate in specific PPTD areas, and comparative views highlight patterns across multiple assessments.

Focus analytical attention on Critical Priority items (exposure 20.0 -25.0) that require immediate intervention and High Priority items (exposure 15.0 -19.99) that warrant significant attention. Examine interdependencies between quality requirements, as improvements in one area may enable or require changes in others. Facilitate prioritization discussions with stakeholders to reach consensus on which gaps will receive dedicated improvement initiatives, balancing exposure scores with practical considerations like resource availability and strategic timing.

Exposure scoring creates objective prioritization by multiplying Importance × Level of Concern, resulting in a 1.0 -25.0 scale that quantifies priority.

Exposure Score Framework

Exposure = Importance × Level of Concern

Prioritization Note: Focus improvement resources on Critical and High Priority items first as these offer the greatest impact on capability effectiveness.

Analysis Considerations:

• Focus on Critical Priority items (exposure 20.0 - 25.0) for immediate action

• Examine patterns across PPTD dimensions

• Discuss interdependencies between quality requirements

• Reach consensus on which gaps require dedicated initiatives

Bubble chart showing quality requirements and their level of exposure

With this step, insights are formalized into Capability Deltas: Create Capability Deltas, translating the findings into actionable initiatives for capability enhancement.

For prioritized quality gaps, create Capability Delta components that translate assessment findings into defined improvement opportunities. Each delta represents a specific change needed to address identified quality concerns, documented with enough precision to enable initiative planning.

In Ardoq, Capability Deltas reside in the Business Capability workspace and connect to the broader model through multiple references: "Is Impacted By" links the delta to the capability it will improve, "Refers To" connects back to the assessment that identified the gap, and the PPTD Category field identifies which dimension the delta addresses.

Implementation:

1. Create new Capability Delta in Business Capabilities workspace using the Create Capability Deltas Survey

2. Document specific improvement needed

3. Link to assessed capability (via "Is Impacted By" from capability)

4. Link to assessment (via "Refers To" from assessment)

In this step, improvement initiatives are linked to delivery programs or portfolios. If you are using the Strategy to Execution Solution, Initiative components will be created when a decision is taken to improve a capability, realizing the “gap” that has been recorded with a Capability Delta component. The Initiative will be part of the realization of a business objective, and the capability delta will have been identified as a dependency: a gap that needs to be addressed in order for the objective to be reached. The relevant portion of the Strategy to Execution metamodel is shown below, so that you can see how the Capability Planning Solution, which leads to the creation of Capability Delta components, links seamlessly to the Strategy to Execution Solution.

Progress is monitored continuously and reassessed periodically to track maturity growth and maintain alignment with business goals.

The typical timeline spans 1–2 weeks of preparation, a 90–120 minute workshop, 3–5 days of post-workshop analysis, 1–2 weeks of initiative planning, and continuous monitoring thereafter, ensuring the Capability Health Check remains a living, adaptive process that drives ongoing organizational improvement.

If you’ve conducted multiple Capability Health Checks, and need to take a bird’s eye view to determine which Business Capabilities have the highest call on investment funds and change resources, Ardoq provides some valuable visualizations.

Use Ardoq's dashboard capabilities to analyze findings:

1. Exposure Score Rankings

2. Capability Deltas

3. Current state of Capability Health Checks

The Capability Health Check delivers maximum value when connected to Ardoq's broader solution ecosystem, creating end-to-end traceability from capability assessment through strategic execution. These integrations transform isolated assessments into a comprehensive capability management system where insights flow seamlessly between solutions and improvements are tracked from identification to realization.

Business Capability Modeling:

Business Capability Modeling provides the foundational structure upon which Capability Health Checks operate. The capability hierarchy established through Business Capability Modeling determines what can be assessed, ensuring Health Checks target well-defined, consistently understood organizational functions. Assessment findings flow back to enrich capability understanding, with exposure scores and identified quality gaps adding performance context to the structural view of what the organization does. This bidirectional relationship means capability models become living artifacts that reflect not just what capabilities exist, but how well they perform across People, Process, Technology, and Data dimensions.

Strategy to Execution:

Strategy to Execution is the primary realization pathway for Capability Health Check findings. Capability Deltas created from high-exposure quality gaps connect directly to initiatives through the "Realizes" reference, enabling organizations to track improvement from identified concern through planned initiative to delivered enhancement. Initiative progress automatically updates delta active periods, providing real-time visibility into when capability improvements will materialize. This integration ensures assessment findings don't remain static observations but translate into funded, resourced, and tracked improvement actions aligned with strategic objectives.

Business Value Streams:

Business Value Streams integration enables organizations to focus assessment efforts where they matter most for value delivery. By understanding which capabilities enable critical value stream stages, organizations can prioritize Health Checks on capabilities that directly impact customer outcomes and strategic value creation. Assessment findings reveal which quality gaps are constraining value flow, enabling targeted improvements that enhance end-to-end value delivery. This connection ensures capability investments are guided by value contribution rather than internal organizational politics or technical preferences.

Business Health Check (VSM):

The Business Health Check based on the Viable Systems Model provides a complementary assessment lens that examines capability viability through communication and coordination effectiveness. While the Capability Health Check evaluates quality across PPTD dimensions, the Business Health Check surfaces concerns about how capabilities interact, adapt, and maintain operational health. Using both assessments together creates a comprehensive evaluation combining internal capability quality (PPTD) with systemic viability (VSM), revealing improvement opportunities that neither approach would identify alone. Organizations with mature capability management practices often conduct both assessments to build complete understanding of capability performance and organizational health.

The Capability Health Check methodology provides a powerful framework for systematically evaluating and improving business capability quality. By following this structured approach, organizations can:

This was a lot of information in a condensed guide. If it left you with more questions than answers, reach out to us! You can access the full methodology document, request training, or contact support through the in-app chat. We're happy to help.