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

Seek Outside Inspiration to Overcome the Blank Page

If you are new to an industry, its complexity can be overwhelming, and creating an overview of the major capabilities can be a time-consuming challenge. Seeking outside inspiration as a start can speed-up your effort and help to overcome the “blank-page” moment. Of course, external sources don’t know all the details of your specific enterprise context (you need to explore those details later by exploring existing enterprise content and in the interviews with business experts), but they help you to gain a good understanding of what’s going on in the industry.

Leverage Industry-Specific Reference Capability Models

There are several industry-specific capability model sources available that provide a validated foundation tailored to a given sector. Consider using them if you're new to an industry, as they can help you gain a clearer understanding of what typically happens within enterprises in that industry. By leveraging these models, you avoid reinventing the wheel and ensure alignment with industry best practices. Even though these models may not reflect the specific context of your enterprise, they can still serve as a valuable starting point.

Use Large Language Models (LLMs)

Large Language Models (LLMs) can be incredibly helpful in creating a first sketch of a Capability Map. They can quickly synthesize publicly available reference models, industry reports, and best practices to generate an overview of typical capabilities. By simply describing the industry, its core activities, and the context of your enterprise—such as region, major product groups, or customer segments—you can prompt an LLM to produce a draft Capability Map that includes major capability groups and their sub-capabilities. This helps you bypass time-consuming research and provides a starting point that can be refined through stakeholder input later. LLMs also support iterative prompting, allowing you to adjust the map as your understanding deepens or as you gather more enterprise-specific insights.

Practical Tips

Use industry-specific Capability Models with care.

Industry-specific capability models come with limitations such as being overly generic and not tailored to the unique context, strategy, or operating model of a specific enterprise. They may lack granularity, omit niche or emerging capabilities, and reflect outdated practices if not regularly updated.

Access to high-quality models often requires paid subscriptions or memberships. Therefore, while they can offer valuable guidance, they should be used and adapted thoughtfully to ensure relevance.

LLMs are more powerful than you’d expect.

Don’t underestimate the power of LLMs. If you prompt iteratively and get specific enough, you’ll receive more valuable insights than you might expect.