"Great enterprise architecture isn't delivered to the enterprise. It's designed with its people: tangible enough to touch, lightweight enough to invite everyone in."
— Wolfgang Goebl, Instructor

Make your capability maps matter

You know the frustration. You've built what should be a powerful artefact — a structured, well-reasoned capability map that could align investment, clarify strategy, drive application portfolio management decisions, and bridge the gap between business and IT. And yet, nobody outside of your small team of Enterprise Architects uses it as the strategic management tool that it should be.

This course is for Enterprise Architects and Business Analysts who are tired of their limited impact and want to create capability maps that business stakeholders co-design and actually use. Using the EDGY Capability Modelling Guidelines, developed by Jim Dowling and Wolfgang Goebl, you will learn how to co-design capability maps that connect purpose, strategy, organisation, and IT in a language everyone can relate to.

This is not another EA framework course. It's a practical, hands-on programme focused on one thing: making the artefact you already use actually land.

Course Outline

Welcome Session
Meet your instructors, your fellow students and discover the course materials.

Week 1: Capability Maps That Everyone Can Read and Own
What makes EDGY capabilities different from the usual IT-centred approaches? How do you name capabilities clearly enough that business and IT stakeholders immediately understand what they mean? How do you structure and describe a capability map for clarity and create it in a way that invites everyone to co-create, own, and use it?

Week 2: AI and Human Intelligence as Co-Creators
Which prompts work best in iterative, collaborative capability design? Learn how to combine AI assistance with the collective wisdom of people to build a capability map that actually gets used widely in your enterprise.

Week 3: Navigating People, Politics, and Power
Capability modelling creates transparency and inevitably surfaces sensitive territory, triggering political resistance. How do you navigate the human side: personal interests, change anxiety, and organisational politics? Learn how to involve business experts and managers, informed by the existing network of relationships and power.

Week 4: From Enterprise Purpose to Investment Decisions
How do you connect capabilities to enterprise purpose and strategy? How do you use them for benchmarking and investment decisions? And what does it take to make IT application portfolio management truly owned by the enterprise and not just the IT department?

Farewell Session: Validate, Celebrate, and Graduate
Conclude the course, celebrate your achievements, validate your capability map, and receive your certificate.

Course Structure

Introductory Session
4pm-5:30pm CEST | Wednesday, September 16
Get started with the course materials and meet your instructor and fellow students virtually.

4 Live course sessions
4pm-5:30pm CEST | Mondays
Reflecting on and discussing the principles of good capability modelling.

4 Practice workshops
4pm-5:30pm CEST | Wednesdays
Live working sessions and hands-on exercises for a deep dive into practical capability modelling.

Pre-work
2 hours per week
Watch 45 to 60 minutes of video content per week and test your knowledge with short quizzes. Refine your work based on feedback from your instructor and fellow students.

Homework
8 hours
Starting after Week 2, you will create a capability map for a complex enterprise following the EDGY Capability Modelling Guidelines, using Claude AI as your co-modelling assistant (your own organisation or one you know well). You will have the opportunity to discuss it with your peers and receive feedback from your instructor.

Closing and outlook
4pm-5:30pm CEST | Monday, October 26
Wrap up on the final Monday, collect feedback, prepare for validation and celebrate!

What will you learn?

• How to co-create a capability map that speaks to business leaders, not just architects
• How to use AI as a co-modelling partner throughout the mapping process
• How to connect capabilities to your enterprise's purpose — the missing link behind most failed maps
• How to engage co-creators from both top-down and bottom-up, so the map becomes shared ownership rather than your problem
• How to benchmark current-state capabilities and prioritise investments in a way that resonates with decision-makers
• How to use your capability map as a blueprint for a modular, adaptive organisation and for an IT architecture that finally makes sense to the business
• How to manage your application portfolio based on a widely accepted capability model

Building your capability map

This is a hands-on course. Between sessions, participants work on a real capability map of a complex enterprise — their own organisation, a client, or a well-known company they choose to analyse. You'll use the EDGY Capability Modelling Guidelines as your guiding framework and Claude (AI) as a co-modelling assistant. By the end of the course, you'll have a working capability map, a peer-reviewed artefact, and a personal toolkit for applying this approach in your day-to-day work.

Who is this for?

This course is designed for Enterprise Architects and Senior Business Architects who:

• are frustrated with the limited impact their work has on business decisions
• are new to capability modelling, or already use it but struggle to get it adopted widely
• want a lightweight, inviting, open-source alternative to the prevalent EA frameworks
• are curious about using AI as a practical co-modelling assistant