This first appeared as a PATimes column in June 2005.

Capability-Based Planning:  Responding On Demand in a Post-9/11 World
by John M. Kamensky

A few weeks ago, a planner in a federal civilian agency posed an interesting dilemma to me:  “My agency developed a goal-based strategic plan after a long, multi-stakeholder involvement process.  But now that the plan is in place, the world has changed and our customers are asking us to focus on different priorities.”  She said: “Our planning process seemed to be a waste.  What did we do wrong?”

Disconnects like this -- between plans and reality -- are occurring more frequently because of a rapidly changing world.  But there are some pioneers in dealing with this instability:  the defense, law enforcement, and emergency preparedness communities.  They have developed a planning process that focuses on creating on-demand capabilities, not necessarily a plan focused on achieving a specific goal.  So, just what is “capability-based planning,” where did it come from, how does it work, and how do you decide when to use it.

What is Capability-Based Planning?

Capability-based planning has evolved over the past decade mainly in the defense and more recently in the homeland security worlds.  According to Dr. Sharon Caudle, an expert on homeland security issues with the Government Accountability Office, the crafters of capability-based planning designed it as “a method for identifying the levels of capability needed to achieve the strategy,” that meets the “need to manage risk, set specific preparedness goals and priorities, make investment choices, and evaluate preparedness results.”

She says the crafters believed it provided the “abilities to accomplish clearly-defined missions with uncertainty as a fundamental condition and efficient portfolio management as a necessary component.”  It is comprised of three components:

• A conceptual framework for planning in conditions of uncertainty by emphasizing a particular capability’s flexibility, robustness, and adaptability.

• An analytic portfolio framework that focuses on: (1) understanding capability needs, (2) assessing capability options, at the level of mission or operation, and (3)allows  choices among capability levels and capability options.

• A solution framework that emphasizes use of building block approach, based on standard groupings or clusters of capabilities.

In the defense world, according to Caudle, capabilities-based planning is seen as a way to:  “create the right blend of plans, people, equipment, and activities – capabilities”-- with distinct abilities useful across a broad spectrum of challenges and circumstances against diverse foes. 

Where Did It Come From?

Capacity-based planning approaches have evolved over the past decade in the defense community and have been refined by a joint US-Canadian-Australian-New Zealander-British defense Technical Cooperation Program over the past few years.  The events of 9/11 catapulted this approach to the forefront because it was specifically designed to conduct planning and make resource choices in a world of uncertainty, risk, and constrained resources. 

Capability-based planning achieved prominence in the Defense Department’s 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, which lays out the department’s strategy for the coming decade.  In the Review’s foreword, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he wanted to  “. . . shift the basis of defense planning from a ‘threat based’ model that has dominated thinking in the past, to a ‘capabilities-based’ model for the future.”  He said this approach would allow Defense to focus more on how adversaries might fight rather than who the adversary is.  This was the first major change in planning approaches since the program-planning-budget system was introduced by Secretary Robert McNamara in 1962. Previously, the Defense budget processes focused on stand-alone solutions -- such as “weapons platforms,” like the C-17 cargo jet -- that were not part of a system of capabilities -- such as the capacity to airlift troops and cargo, regardless of what type of aircraft is used. 

Capability-based planning is also the underpinning for the planning process used by the Department of Homeland Security in developing a new national preparedness strategy.  A 2003 Presidential Homeland Security Directive requires the Department to create a national preparedness goal, with priorities, targets, and metrics.  The Department is implementing this directive using the capability-based planning approach.  This development process, still underway, is based on 15 different scenarios and includes state and local governments.

How Does It Work? 

According to Caudle’s research on the development of capability-based planning, the process starts by identifying plausible worries that the country or an agency might face.  These, in turn, are used to produce a set of possible scenarios -- current, mid-term, long-term.  For example, in Homeland Security, these might be a hurricane, or a terrorist attack against the food supply.  These scenarios are then entered into an analytic framework that defines the specific capabilities that would be needed to respond to each of these scenarios.  This framework would, in turn, be used to define operational challenges, options to address the challenges, the specific capabilities, a rating of risks, and choices among options.  Defense planners, according to Caudle, describe key elements in the approach, shown in the accompanying table.

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Defense Planners Key Elements of a Capability-Based Planning System

• Capabilities - the ability to achieve an effect to a standard under specified conditions.

• Tasks that comprise each capability - an action or activity derived from mission analysis, doctrine, SOPs, or concepts that may be assigned to an organization.

• Concept of Operations- an overall picture and broad flow of tasks within a plan by which a commander maps capabilities to effects, and effects to end-state for a specific scenario.

• Mission - the objectives and end-state to achieve, and tasks assigned to a executive to achieve.

• Capability effects achieving a desired end-state - change to a condition or behavior that defines achievement of the mission.

• Measures - quantitative or qualitative basis for describing the quality of task performance.

Source:  Sharon Caudle, “Homeland Security and Capabilities-Based Planning:  Improving National Preparedness,” 2005 (draft thesis).

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According to Caudle, the major steps to take in implementing a capability-based planning effort include the following:

• Determine if the capability-based planning approach works in your agency’s context and build a business case with your agency leaders for the adoption of the capability-based planning approach.

• Work with agency leaders and stakeholders to set agency strategic policy goals and cascade them into operational documents.

• Ensure stakeholder and top leader ownership of the process.

• Focus on defining specific management decision-making processes.

• Include a risk assessment approach to determine investments.

• Define different planning horizons to stage the development of capabilities.

• Define specific mission-based scenarios to serve as the basis for planning.

• Craft capabilities and define standard categories of capabilities.

• Develop decision rules for the development of task and capability lists.

• Build in an evolutionary approach for implementation and incentives to institutionalize this approach.

When Should It Be Used?

There seem to be four conceptually different approaches to planning.  Determining the choice among the approaches depends in large part on the context in which your agency operates, and the scope and authority which it has to address an issue.  These are:

• Mission-based approach:  This approach measures progress toward its mission and acts as a method for allocating resources. It is the traditional approach, rooted in a formal goal-setting, measurement, and assessment system.  The Veterans Administration successfully uses this approach.

• Vision-based logic model approach:  This approach describes a clear and compelling picture of the ideal organizational framework to achieving an outcome. This framework links various programs in a causal chain to achieve desired results.  The Canadian human resource services agencies use this approach.

• Resource-based approach:  based on the assumption that the effective use of resources should drive strategy development.  Organizations that use this approach tend to focus on their organization’s capital assets. The strategy development process for these organizations emphasizes understanding what they have (physical and knowledge) and leveraging these assets.  Agencies such as the Forest Service, Park Service, and Public Housing tend to use this approach.

• Capability-based approach:  This approach, as noted earlier, is founded on the belief that every organization possesses a unique set of capabilities, and leveraging those capabilities defines its contribution to the mission.  It identifies scenerios, long and short term possibilities, and plans for them, using analysis and decision-making to achieve an affordable, acceptable level of risks.

Choosing among these approaches may be based, in part, on your beliefs as to what your organization stands for and how it fits in the broader world.  In some cases, where that world is stable, the traditional mission-based approach may be the best fit.  But if that broader world is increasingly unstable, and driven by a need to choose among different levels of risk, adapting the capability-based planning model may help ensure your agency’s planning process stays relevant to the results expected by stakeholders and customers.