Herding Cats

Over the years, traditional program management methods applied to software development have had lower success rates than they could have. These conventional methods rely on a retrospective approach, measuring variance against the plan rather than forecasting performance to guide programs in a chaotic environment. [1]These programs have several programmatic control issues, suggesting a better approach is needed. [2]

This linear program planning process, sometimes known as waterfall, often derives from PMBOK-style planning processes, which give little attention to the forces that negatively impact the program. These program risks have no means of evaluation beyond acknowledging their presence, defining mitigations, and tracking results. The program management process does not include evaluating how the system’s capabilities affect the product or solution’s value.

In this approach, avoiding or controlling change becomes program management’s primary activity. In this traditional model, change is undesirable. In real-world solution systems development, change is natural and desirable. Through change, the system can adapt to the needs of the acquiring entity, driven by external forces. These forces are rarely under the program manager’s control, and even less under the acquiring entity’s senior management.

A common program failure mode is when participants and program leaders fail to distinguish between managing in the presence of change and managing change. Managing in the presence of change is a critical success factor of any modern systems engineering-based development.

Definition of Capability-Based Planning

… involves analyzing 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 criteria are sought

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

Measuring program deliverables’ maturity as a function of effort and time assures that program management adds value to the acquiring entity. Simply controlling and measuring resource expenditure, scorekeeping, provides little value in the face 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. Still, they do not forecast the value delivered to the acquiring entity or how that value traces to the user community’s needs.

Capabilities answer the following question: to achieve our technical and operational objectives, what capabilities must we possess? [1]

Capabilities-based planning shifts the focus from delivering features and functions to delivering processes and technologies that support the acquiring entity’s strategy. Capabilities–based planning plans under uncertainty to provide capabilities suited to a wide range of challenges and circumstances for the acquiring entity, while working within an economic framework. This approach emphasizes flexibility, adaptability, 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 meeting demands without explicitly specifying 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 effect without an a priori specification. Features and functions require an a priori specification to test their existence or conformance. 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, assess its effectiveness within an operational paradigm, and choose requirements and how to achieve the capability using an integrated portfolio framework to produce a 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. It emphasizes operational capabilities rather than features and functions. These operational capabilities become the building blocks of change. It also emphasizes evaluating capabilities under uncertainty, which requires deploying robust building blocks that can adapt to change. In both cases, analysis clarifies which alternatives are feasible.

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:

1. Finding alternatives

2. Evaluating existing alternatives

The first use (finding alternatives) is the most common but needs fixing. The second use is equivalent to simulation-based acquisition. For example, it assumes that the acquiring entity’s strategy can be inferred from the 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 relate to one another across contexts; changes to one operational scenario may affect another. Scenario selection must be based on a clear understanding of how scenarios relate to and affect one another. 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, ‘Why are we doing this?’  A capabilities-based planning process can augment strategy-making activities by mapping strategies to maturity evaluation points for each emerging capability. This approach connects a program’s ‘why’ to its ‘how’. The result is replacing progress measured by the passage of time with progress measured by delivered capabilities.

Capabilities-based planning focuses on assessing the increasing maturity of strategy-defined functionality. Planning under uncertainty equips decision-makers to address various challenges and circumstances while working within an economic framework that requires choice.

It focuses on “possible uses” rather than specific features and functions. For example:

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

The difference between a capability and a feature or function is that a feature or function delivers a prespecified solution. In contrast, a capability creates a foundation for responding to uncertain demands. This ability to react to uncertainty increases the probability of program success. Trying to control this uncertainty through frozen specifications and change-control procedures ignores the reality of the acquiring entity’s environment; uncertainty is a way of life. Trying to control uncertainty leads to failure; success depends on managing it. [1]

A capabilities-based planning process…

• Focuses on the outcomes rather than on the features and functions of an IT 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 required maturity and assesses its presence to inform the acquiring entity’s strategy: what capabilities do I need at this point to accomplish my mission?

Capabilities-based planning replaces specifying features and functions with defining the mission and strategy capabilities needed, 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.
• It identifies the features and functions that serve as the raw materials for capabilities.
• It makes the capabilities that enable strategy delivery visible.

What’s Next?

With a set of capabilities in mind, you need a plan to deliver them. One approach to building this plan is an Event-Based Integrated Master Plan (IMP) that shows the increasing maturity of the program deliverables in the WBS, and the Integrated Master Schedule (IMP) that shows the work to be performed to produce those deliverables.

[1] Wharton Strategic Management, “Three Reasons Why Good Strategies Fail: Exforecasting performance execution, Execution, …” 10 August 2005.

[2] “Uncertainty and Program Management: Beyond the Critical Path Mentality,” Arnoud de Meyer, INSEAD Working Paper, 2001.

[3] “Analytical Architecture for Capabilities–Based Planning, Mission–System Analysis, and Transformation,” Paul K. Davis, RAND National Defense Research Institute, MR–1513–OSD, 2002.

[4] This does not mean we don’t need configuration control, change control, or change management. It means these processes and their tools must support change management, rather than trying to prevent change. Change prevention (or a change-prevention department) adds little value to a systems-of-systems development program.