In Phase A of the TOGAF ADM (Architecture Vision), understanding your organization’s current business capabilities is essential. The Business Capability Assessment helps you evaluate how well your existing capabilities support the strategic goals and identify areas that need improvement or investment to realize the target architecture vision.
Business capabilities represent “what” the organization does (e.g., Order Management, Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Logistics) — independent of how or by whom they are performed. Assessing them typically involves scoring maturity, performance, importance, and gaps across multiple dimensions, then visualizing the results for easy interpretation by business leaders.
Manually building this assessment requires workshops, surveys, data collection, scoring, and chart creation — a process that can take days or weeks. Visual Paradigm’s AI-powered TOGAF Guide-Through changes that: AI generates a professional, insightful Business Capability Assessment radar chart in seconds based on your description, making this critical Phase A deliverable fast, visual, and impactful.
Why Business Capability Assessment Matters in Phase A
This assessment delivers several key benefits:
- Reveals strengths and weaknesses in how the business currently operates
- Highlights capability gaps that the target architecture must address
- Helps prioritize which capabilities need the most attention in later ADM phases
- Provides a clear, graphical way to communicate business needs to executives and stakeholders
- Aligns the architecture vision with real business value and strategic priorities
TOGAF recommends using radar (spider) charts to display capability maturity across multiple dimensions — making it easy to spot imbalances and focus areas at a glance.
How AI Creates the Business Capability Radar Chart in Visual Paradigm
In the TOGAF Guide-Through, go to the Phase A activity: Perform Business Capability Assessment. The AI-assisted workflow is designed to be simple and effective:
- Describe Your Capabilities
Provide a natural language overview of your organization’s key business capabilities, their current performance, maturity, or any known issues. Example: “Our retail business has strong in-store sales capabilities but weak digital e-commerce integration, average supply chain visibility, good customer loyalty programs, and limited real-time inventory management.” - AI Analyzes and Scores
The AI identifies relevant business capabilities from your description, evaluates them against standard maturity criteria (e.g., people, process, technology, information), and assigns realistic scores based on TOGAF best practices and common capability models. - Instant Radar Chart Generation
AI produces a clean, professional radar chart that visualizes the maturity or performance level of each capability. The chart uses multiple axes (one for each capability), with scores extending outward from the center — higher scores reach further, instantly highlighting strengths (long spokes) and weaknesses (short spokes).
The radar chart opens directly in Visual Paradigm’s editor, where you can:
- Adjust scores or add/remove capabilities based on feedback
- Customize labels, colors, or add target maturity rings for comparison
- Annotate key insights for presentations
- Link the chart to other Phase A deliverables (like the Solution Concept diagram)
Benefits of AI-Assisted Business Capability Assessment
- Speed: From description to visual chart in moments — no need for lengthy data gathering or manual charting.
- Clarity & Impact: The radar chart is intuitive and powerful for business stakeholders — they can immediately see where the organization excels and where investment is needed.
- Consistency: AI applies structured criteria aligned with TOGAF and industry capability models, reducing subjectivity.
- Actionable Insights: Weak areas are visually obvious, helping prioritize Phase B (Business Architecture) work.
- Iterative Flexibility: Update your description as more information emerges, and AI regenerates the chart instantly.
This AI feature makes capability assessment feel accessible and strategic rather than bureaucratic — helping architects bridge the gap between business needs and architecture vision quickly and confidently.
Ready to Visualize Your Business Capabilities the Smart Way?
Experience how AI turns your capability description into a professional radar chart that drives better decisions in Phase A.
Download Visual Paradigm today and start your free trial — describe your business capabilities in the Guide-Through and let AI generate your Business Capability Assessment radar chart in seconds.
Bring clarity and focus to your Architecture Vision — faster than ever before.