CAPED, in a nutshell, is a structure for organizing work on an initiative so that the high-value, high-complexity parts happen first.
In many organizations, there are lots of incentives for doing exactly the opposite. Leaders want early estimates, leading to early decomposition and analysis. Teams want confidence that they’re going to do the right thing and make progress, so they tend to start with research and infrastructure. Both of those move people away from experimenting with those complex, high-value parts of the work. Unfortunately, this is a recipe for projects that start with lots of optimism and end with everyone burned out and dissatisfied.
Our new Certified CAPED Consultant program is a way for us to equip and support the change agents who can help their organizations shift to a complexity-first approach.
Now, you might be convinced, but how do you make the business case to get budget to become a Certified CAPED Consultant?
Start With the Problem
It’s easy to come in excited about a new solution, but alignment on the problem needs to come first. What tends to go wrong with big, mission-critical initiatives in your context? Some common answers:
- Projects start off with detailed planning and estimates but many things still end up taking longer than expected
- Teams just jump in and get started, and it’s hard to get an accurate sense of the state of things (“we’re still working on it!”)
- Important details show up late when there’s not much time or budget left to respond effectively
- There’s a pendulum between planning too much and planning too little, and it’s a constant debate and source of frustration
Maybe it’s one of these common challenges. Maybe you’re seeing something else. Whatever it is, start your conversation there. Share the problem you see. Ask your leaders what they see. Dig into why the problem is a problem.
You actually don’t need to get into the details of CAPED all that much. What matters is that you’ve found a possible solution for an important pain.
(We’re not immune to this mistake. We were excited about CAPED and the problems it solved. In a conversation with a tech board member friend, Peter pulled up the CAPED diagram hoping his friend would also be excited about it. Instead, he got, “I don’t have time to read all that. What’s the value proposition? Why should I care?” Fair point. Peter backed up and aligned on the problem first.)
Tune Into WII-FM
WII-FM = “what’s in it for me?”
Don’t just emphasize organizational problems. Dig into why the problem is painful for *them*. “You know how frustrating and awkward it is when you have to go back to your project sponsors and explain why their project isn’t green anymore? I think I’ve found a way to reliably avoid that pattern.”
If you don’t know why the problem is painful for them, don’t guess, ask. “When changes happen late in a project, what challenges does that create for you?”
Tie It to a Strategic Initiative
We’ve seen training budgets get slashed all over the place. But you know what budgets aren’t being cut? Strategic development projects. It seems like every org we encounter has a strategic GenAI project in the works, for example.
Instead of looking for budget for training for its own sake, show how becoming a Certified CAPED Consultant will make a strategic initiative more likely to succeed. Then, you might be able to get some of that budget.
A small- to medium-sized software development initiative with one or two teams dedicated to it easily has a loaded cost of $10-20k per day in a typical US company. If you can apply techniques from CAPED to avoid even one day of wasted work, you’re showing a more than 2x return on investment.
Do your own numbers to make it fit your context, but know that you don’t have to work very hard to make a strong financial case.
Emphasize the Multiplier Effect
Peter and I teach workshops to help our clients adopt CAPED, level up their product management to delight their customers, and scale their leadership effectiveness. Our clients, as a rule, pay for each participant in those workshops. (And, btw, they tell us they get great value for that investment, but that’s not the point here.)
You’ll come back from Certified CAPED Consultant training equipped and licensed to run internal workshops that’ll up-skill others and increase the success of your projects. There’s a multiplier effect. When building your business case, emphasize that you getting trained will make it possible for more people to grow their skills without additional training investments.
Bonus Tip
Finally, a bonus tip… Often, training requests die from indecision rather than rejection. You don’t get a clear “no,” but you also never get that “yes.”
So ask now. Draft a focused request that names one or two real challenges your team or organization is facing and how CAPED directly addresses them — whether it’s preventing costly rework, improving forecasting, or helping your team surface complexity before it becomes a problem.
Then, follow up in a few days if you don’t hear back — a gentle reminder helps prevent good requests from getting lost in the overflow.
Want help drafting an email to your manager? Here’s a template you can start with.
Hope to see you at our next workshop!