Capabilities-Based Planning is the Basis of Increasing the Probability of Project Success (Part 3)

The basis of success for all programs, no matter the domain, program management process (Agile or Traditional), program management tools, and technology, starts by answering the questions posed by the Five Immutable Principles needed to deliver the Capabilities needed to accomplish the Mission or fulfill the Strategyat the needed time, for the needed cost:

1. What does Done look like in units of measure meaningful to the decision-makers, starting with Measures of Effectiveness (MOE), Measures of Performance (MOP), Technical Performance Measures (TPM), and Key Performance Parameters (KPP)?
2. What is the Plan to reach Done, with the needed outcomes fulfilling these measures on the needed date, for the needed cost, to deliver the needed Capabilities to accomplish a mission or fulfill a strategy?
3. What Resources - staff, facilities, funding, and regulatory compliance will be needed to reach Done as needed?
4. What are the Impediments to reaching Done at the needed time, for the needed cost, with the needed Capabilities?
5. How will Progress to Plan be measured in units of measure meaningful to the decision-makers? The passage of time, consumption of money, production of Stories, and Story points are not measures of progress to Plan. Delivering Capabilities to accomplish the mission are.

Over the years, the success rate of traditional program management methods applied to product and development programs has needed to be revised. These traditional methods are based on a retrospective approach which measures variance against plan rather than providing a performance forecast that can be used to guide programs in a chaotic environment. Several programmatic control issues associated with programs suggest that a better approach is needed.

This workshop addresses the sources of program performance shortfalls and shows how starting with Capabilities-Based Planning can increase the probability of success.

Capabilities-Based Planning is defined as … involving the functional analysis of operational requirements. Capabilities are identified based on the tasks required… Once the required capability inventory is defined, the most cost-efficient options to satisfy the requirements are sought as the foundation for increasing the probability of program success.

What are Capabilities and Why Are They Better at Describing Program Maturity?

Measuring program deliverable's maturity as a function of effort and time assures that program management adds value to the acquiring entity. Simply controlling and measuring the expenditure of resources – scorekeeping – provides little value in the presence of change.

Capabilities–based planning provides a defined outcome that is not a conclusion but lays the groundwork for continued value delivery. Objectives are reached, and the operational value is delivered when a defined capability is available for use.? Features and functions describe a system's static and dynamic behaviors but are not directly connected to the solution strategy. Milestones indicate that a position in a timeline has been reached but do not forecast what value will be delivered to the acquiring entity or how this value is traceable to the user community's needs.

Capabilities answer the following question: to achieve our technical and operational objectives, what capabilities must we possess?

Capabilities-based planning transforms the delivery of features and functions into the delivery of processes and technologies that support the acquiring entity strategy. Capabilities–based planning is planning, under the conditions of uncertainty, to provide capabilities suitable for a wide range of acquiring entity challenges and circumstances while working within an economic framework. This approach emphasizes flexibility, adaptiveness, and robust capabilities, implying a modular building–block approach to delivering complex systems of systems solutions.

Capabilities are not the same as features and functions; capabilities enable demands to be met without explicit specification of the solution. A capability is an ability to affect an outcome, react to an input, or change an effect.

A capability provides an outcome or an effect without an a priori specification. Features and functions require an a priori specification to test for their existence or conformance to the specification. Capabilities–based planning can be understood at the execution level, but it needs to be raised to the level of enterprise process analysis:

Identify a needed capability in operational terms, using the set of capability options to assess the effectiveness in an operational paradigm, and make choices about requirements and how to achieve the capability using an integrated portfolio framework to produce an output set of options based on these operational paradigms.

Putting capabilities–based planning to work requires a change in our approach to planning — a set of acquiring entity process improvement activities focused on assessing the increasing maturity of the capabilities needed to fulfill the strategic objectives. Emphasis is placed on operational capabilities rather than features and functions. These operational capabilities become the building blocks of change. The emphasis is also placed on evaluating capabilities under uncertain conditions, which requires deploying robust building blocks capable of adapting to these changes. In both cases, analysis illuminates the feasibility of alternatives.

Using Scenarios to Define Capabilities

Scenario-based planning is one approach to defining the objectives in an enterprise application development environment. While scenarios are a popular decision–making process, we must distinguish between two approaches to scenario-based development:

• Finding alternatives
• Evaluating existing alternatives

The first use (finding alternatives) is the most common but needs fixing. The second use is equivalent to simulation-based acquisition. An example is the assumption that the acquiring entity's strategy can be discovered by studying individual scenarios. This what-if approach to optimal decision-making is flawed when some parameters are unknown — as in most IT programs.

A capability-based view of the world can address issues found in scenario-based planning. Scenarios are related in different contexts; changes to one operational scenario may impact another. The selection of scenarios must be based on the proper understanding of the relations and impact on other scenarios. Capabilities provide a collection point to consolidate scenarios by systematically defining operational concepts and their relationships. Each capability defines the compelling rationale for decisions in a program portfolio.

Augmenting Our Strategy–Making with Capabilities

Strategy–making is the starting point for program management. It asks and answers the question why are we doing this?? Strategy-making activities can be augmented through a capabilities-based planning process by mapping strategies to assess maturity evaluation points for each emerging capability. This approach connects the why of a program with the how. The result is replacing the measurement of progress as the passage of time with the measurement of progress as the delivery of capabilities.

Capabilities-based planning focuses on assessing the increasing maturity of functionality defined by the strategy. Planning under uncertainty provides capabilities suitable for various challenges and circumstances while working within an economic framework that necessitates a choice.

The focus is on “possible uses” rather than specified features and functions. For example:

• What features do we need to achieve the desired capability?
• How much of each capability do we need at a specific time to satisfy our strategy?
• How would we apply a capability to pursue a strategy if we possessed it?
• With a specific capability, what benefits could be accrued to our organization, and how would we measure these benefits?
• How can we test our strategies using these measurable benefits???

A capability and a feature or function differ between delivering a pre-specified solution and creating a foundation for responding to uncertain demands. This ability to respond in the presence of uncertainty provides value to increase the probability of program success. Trying to control this uncertainty through frozen specifications and change control procedures ignores the reality of the acquiring entity environment – uncertainty is the way of life. Controlling uncertainty leads to failure; managing uncertainty is the basis of success.

A capabilities-based planning process…

• Focuses on the outcomes rather than on the features and functions of a system – what can I do with the system when that capability is available?
• Focuses on delivering the value of the effort that produces these outcomes rather than consuming resources – what have you done for me lately?
• Defines the needed maturity and assesses its presence to provide feedback to the acquiring entity strategy – what capabilities do I need at this point to accomplish my mission?

Capabilities-based planning replaces the specification of features and functions with the definition of the needed mission and strategy capabilities, traceable through a portfolio of programs and their program events.

It does so by:

• Planning the delivery of capabilities rather than the delivery of features and functions.
• Identifing the features and functions that are the raw materials of capabilities.
• Making Visible the capabilities that enable the delivery of the strategy.

Leading Indicators are Needed for Project Success

Essential Views provide leading indicators of success to tell us we are progressing at the planned rate and, if not, what to do about it.

The leading indicator provides visibility to the decision makers in units of measures meaningful to their decisions. It shows them where the program is going. It shows them when the program is going to encounter trouble.

Most importantly, it shows these decision-makers what is forecast to happen in the future using statistically sound measures, not just linear projections of past performance.

25 Essential Views Needed to Oversee the Successful Delivery of the Program Capabilities, on Time and Budget

Along with the principles and practices of Capabilities-Based Planning, this workshop will introduce 25 Essential Views needed to assess the program's performance when performing the 5 immutable principles and their practices.

The Essential Views:

• Assess the status of technical, cost, and schedule progress to plan,
• Determine which areas of the project are problematic, and
• Help develop mitigation or corrective actions before small problems become big problems.

Essential Views increase the probability of program success through the data provided to the Integrated Program Management Processes through Leading and Lagging Indicators and other elements of the Performance Measurement Baseline.

• “Lagging Indicators” are data contained in the program performance reporting. This data must be verified for credibility before any “leading indicators” can be used.
• “Leading Indicators” provide credible cost and schedule forecasts, using the “Lagging Indicators” and other measures of effectiveness and performance.

The 25 Essential Views increase the probability of success for delivering the Capabilities needed to accomplish the mission or fulfill the strategy by providing feedback on the progress to plan for those capabilities.

What's Next?

With a set of capabilities in mind, a plan for delivering the capabilities is needed. One approach to building this plan is an Event-Based Integrated Master Plan (IMP) showing the increasing maturity of the program deliverables found in the WBS and the Integrated Master Schedule (IMP) showing the work to produce those deliverables.

This workshop will define the processes and procedures needed to increase the probability of success of any program, in any domain, based on any technology.

Those attending this workshop will take home the processes, with their principles and practices needed to increase the probability of their program’s success that have been applied to other federal and defense acquisition programs.

This success starts with Capabilities Based Planning and concludes with standard program management processes of Systems Engineering, Earned Value Management, and Risk Management.