Capability Modeling Guidelines: Existing Enterprise Content

Capability Modelling Guidelines | How to use Capabilities to Align Investments with Purpose

Explore existing enterprise content

If you’re new to an enterprise and still learning about its business domain, a first priority should be understanding what the organisation actually does today. You need a baseline to judge performance and to start discovering potential future states. In the early weeks, that means diving into existing documents like strategy papers, project lists, process models, organisational charts, and more. There's often a lot of valuable information in documents already available, even if it’s scattered or inconsistent. Gather and explore them to understand as much as you can about:

• How the enterprise sees itself and its future (website, mission/vision statements, strategy documents, KPIs);
• How customers engage with the enterprise (customer research insights, service blueprints, journey maps);
• Which products it creates and which terminology it uses (website, product catalogue, process model);
• How it is organised, how decisions are made (org charts, job descriptions, process maps);
• Which change initiatives it runs and what changes have been triggered successfully and unsuccessfully in the past (projects and programs);

As part of this discovery work, it’s helpful to start sketching an internal capability model based on what you’re learning. This early draft is just for your own use—it helps clarify your thinking and gives structure to the complexity you’re seeing. Often, this exercise uncovers significant gaps and inconsistencies: vision and mission statements don’t align with the project portfolio, process models don’t reflect real operations, and organisational charts tell a different story than often technical capability models. This kind of initial modelling not only accelerates your learning, but also surfaces issues that may need to be addressed later when you talk to business experts and managers.

Practical tips

Curb your enthusiasm to start designing.

Take your time with the discovery work and aim to learn as much as possible from existing content. As a rule of thumb, plan several weeks for a smaller enterprise and a couple of months for a large enterprise.

Sketch a glossary, Capability Map and list of open questions.

Exploring existing content can be overwhelming, and you’ll likely uncover inconsistent use of language. Start with a glossary, sketch a Capability Map, and create a list of open questions early for your own reference.

Be prepared before involving business experts.

Business experts who hold the existing wisdom will not be happy when you display a lack of basic domain knowledge. Demonstrating that you are a curious learner builds the trust you need to create a Capability Map and resolve conflicts.

Related Patterns

• #2: Pre-existing Wisdom

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