Capability-Based Planning vs. Traditional Project Planning Approaches
By Jibility Co-Founder Chuen Seet
When you have a strategic objective, it can be easy to jump into a familiar, traditional program/project planning approach — especially if traditional is the de facto in your organisation.
Capability-based planning (capability modelling) opens the door to an alternative way of thinking by flipping aspects of traditional planning and answering deeper questions.
The distinction can seem nebulous. So in this article, we’ll look at how capability-based planning rewires a traditional approach to project planning, and how the two approaches can work together.
What Is the Traditional Program/Project Planning Approach?
Traditional program/project planning is primarily a top-down approach, focused on decomposing a problem or scope into a set of outcomes or deliverables. This feeds into a list of projects, which are then further decomposed into a set of tasks and subtasks.
The pyramid diagram below shows this concept.
When decomposing a program scope or problem, planners often hold brainstorming workshops to elicit and elaborate a collection of required projects or initiatives. They may also apply a prioritization filter over the list of projects, based on any one of the many techniques available, such as business value and risk assessment, or just a forced list ranking.
With a list of prioritized projects in hand, the planners proceed to formulate tasks and subtasks by using a proven work breakdown structure. Some typical work breakdown structures have phases or stages at the top level, for example:
Initiation, planning, execution, control, close
Requirements, design, build, test, implement, support, close
Plan, build, run
Diagram: example of a work breakdown structure with 5 stages: initiation, planning, execution, control and close.
Don’t get me wrong; a work breakdown structure is a proven approach that is applied almost everywhere. It’s excellent for deriving a list of actions when there is a known scope of work.
The critical question, however, is this: how do you determine the scope of work in the first place? Given a goal or challenge to address, on what basis are the projects derived? How does the planner know whether the list of projects and actions are complete or necessary?
It’s worth noting here that such questions also apply to agile project planning approaches. But in the case of agile, you create, prioritize and schedule a backlog of items. On what basis are the backlog items derived?
For now, though, we’ll focus on traditional program/project planning and how this approach can be improved upon by capability-based planning in order to answer those critical questions.
How Does Capability-Based Planning Compare?
Capability-based planning (capability modelling) is another approach that complements traditional (and agile) program/project planning approaches. It focuses on understanding the capabilities that exist; the capabilities that need to change; and the capabilities that must be established to meet the organisation’s objectives.
There are 3 key differentiators with a capability-based planning approach:
- Avoids jumping into solutions by formulating projects or initiatives without first understanding which capabilities need to change.
- Takes a holistic view by mapping the capabilities of the organisation or business area, to ensure that nothing is missed.
- Targets only the capabilities with change required to meet specific objectives, i.e. doesn’t waste time elaborating actions for capabilities (or areas) that do not need change or are not required.
Similar to traditional program/project planning, capability-based planning also starts with a decomposition approach to identify the problem or scope, objectives, capabilities, and list of actions.