Agile wasn’t working. It was, frankly, chaos.
Planning never went beyond two weeks. Retrospectives didn’t really lead to improvement. Estimates weren’t trusted by anybody.
Susan, the Director of Engineering, was taking heat from all sides.
Her boss wasn’t happy with things. Devs felt like they had too many meetings. Her counterparts on the product side of the organization were frustrated at the lack of predictability; they didn’t trust teams to deliver.
Susan said, “We’re just not doing Agile right. We need to improve our practices. We can still be agile and plan longer than two weeks, we just need to develop our capacity there.”
But Susan’s boss didn’t want to hear it. He declared, “I don’t want to hear the word ‘Agile’ anymore. I just want you to deliver.”
If this sounds familiar, you’re probably facing the same impossible choice Susan was: abandon everything you’ve learned about iterative development, or keep fighting an uphill battle with leaders who’ve lost faith in agile approaches.
But there’s a third option.
Smart organizations have found a way to get both predictability and adaptability. They use structured experimentation to resolve uncertainty early, then make plans based on what they’ve actually learned. Their teams stay flexible while their leaders get the forecasts they need to run the business.
We’ve systematized this approach into CAPED (Complexity-Aware Planning, Estimation, and Delivery). The organizations we’ve worked with find they can finally give leadership the predictability they need while keeping teams focused on solving the right problems.
Here’s what’s different: Instead of choosing between rigid quarterly planning and reactive chaos, CAPED distinguishes between work that can be analyzed and work that must be discovered through experimentation. You front-load the experiments, resolve the core complexity, then plan the predictable parts with actual data.
This turns up the dials on the best agile principles and practices, while also using the best of traditional project management. We don’t need to compromise and get the worst of both!
Want to be the person who can solve this in your organization?
The Certified CAPED Consultant Workshop
This isn’t just training on the CAPED approach—it’s professional certification that positions you as the person who can solve the predictability vs adaptability problem that’s plaguing organizations everywhere.
You’ll learn:
- How to lead CAPED adoptions that actually stick
- The specific moves that get skeptical leadership on board
- How to handle the resistance patterns we see over and over
- The facilitation techniques that make complexity mapping work
You’ll leave able to:
- Be the person who finally solves the planning problem in your organization
- Guide teams through the uncertainty-resolution process that makes CAPED work
- Position yourself as someone who gets results, not just follows frameworks
We’ve been refining this approach for years with our most successful clients. The workshop distills everything we’ve learned about making it work in real organizations with real constraints.
There are organizations right now struggling with exactly what Susan was facing. They need someone who can show them a better way.
REGISTER NOW – CAPED Consultant Certification Workshop
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*Questions about the program? Contact us!
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