Redgum Private Review

Building Capability

Tool: The Big Picture Planner

Chapter: 4 — Thinking Big Before You Build Small
Purpose: Help you define the full ambition of your capability build before committing to a first phase — so that every early decision points in the right direction.

How to Use This Tool

This tool is designed to be completed before any build decisions are made. It asks you to think about your end state first, then work backward to a coherent first step.

Before you begin: Have your Business Landscape Map from Chapter 2 in front of you. The Base Layer gives you the honest picture of where you are today. This tool asks you to imagine what that map could look like in three to five years — and then to think carefully about what architectural decisions, made now, would either open or close the path between here and there.

Allow 90 minutes. Ideally do this with the person or people who will own the capability investment, plus at least one person who deeply understands day-to-day operations.

Part 1: The End State

These questions are about where you want to end up — not what you can realistically achieve in phase one. Don’t constrain your answers here.

1. What would this organisation look like at its best?
Describe your business in three to five years if capability building goes well. What can it do that it can’t do today? Who does it serve? How does it operate?

Description:

2. The franchise prototype test
If you had to hand this business to a competent new owner tomorrow, what would break? List the knowledge, processes, and dependencies that currently exist only in people’s heads.

What would break:
Who currently holds that knowledge:

3. What would need to be systematised for that hand-off to work?
Looking at your list above, which of those things would have the most value if they were captured in a system rather than in a person?

High-priority things to systematise:
Why each one matters:

4. What does the full capability picture look like — across all three horizons?
Without worrying about sequence or cost, list everything you can imagine being built that would move the business toward its best version.

Horizon One (Scale Up — better / faster / less manual):

Horizon Two (Scale Out — new segments / models / reach):

Horizon Three (Blue Ocean — something genuinely new):

Example. APS Optima.

  • Build automated layout engine and central model of the newspaper.
  • Work with each department of the newspaper to understand how they work with the page plans model and build specific tooling to deliver value to each department.
  • Move the digital twin to cloud, enable cross edition and cross publisher group processing for corporates to understand their complete picture.

Part 2: The Architecture Test

These questions check whether you’ve thought about the foundations — the decisions that will either open or close options later.

Look at the systems column of your Base Layer. For each system currently shown — software platforms, data sources, integrations, shared drives — ask: is this fit for a future that’s significantly more capable than today? Is it flexible enough to connect with what you’d want to build? Or is it already a constraint you’ll need to design around? The architecture test starts with what you already have.

5. What data do you wish you had, but don’t currently capture?
Think about the decisions you make that would be better if you had better information. What information is missing?

Decision:
Information currently missing:
Where that information would come from if you captured it:

6. What systems does any future build need to connect with?
List the existing platforms, tools, or data sources that a new capability would eventually need to integrate with.

System / tool:
What it holds:
Whether an integration is essential or desirable:

7. Are there architectural decisions being made today in existing systems that will limit what you can build later?
This is a harder question. It may require a technical conversation. But if you have existing systems that are inflexible, proprietary, or poorly integrated, it’s better to know that now.

Existing system:
Potential limitation:
Whether it needs to be addressed before building:

Part 3: The First Step

Now that you have the full picture in view, work backward to a coherent first step.

8. What is the smallest meaningful first build that is consistent with the bigger picture?
Not the easiest thing. The best first step toward your actual destination, one that delivers genuine value and points in the right direction.

First phase description:
Value it delivers on its own:
How it connects to the larger ambition:

Example. APS created a newspaper layout tool for operators and it had an automated layout engine. This product was sold on its own and solved layout operators key issues. The engine was then separated from the tool and sold as a “headless server”, this enabled the rest of the suite to be built around the “always current” data produced by the engine and operators could provide the fine tuning.

9. What would the first phase need to be true of, for the second phase to be possible?
Think about data, architecture, process, and team capability. What foundations need to be right?

Foundation requirements:

Example.

  • We need a central, single source of truth about the newspaper layout.
  • We need both humans and algorithms to work together on the same model.
  • We need to understand the performance of the engine so that we can understand the processing capacity and costs.

10. What assumptions are you making that you haven’t tested yet?
Be honest. Every plan contains untested assumptions. Which of yours matter most — and how will you find out if they’re right?

Assumption:
Why it matters:
How you'll test it:

Example.

  • We can automate the layout fast enough and cheap enough to scale with. It matters because if its too slow we will not be able to cost effectively act at scale and key clients will not be able to use it. Write the engine and test with existing data.
  • The customer will see enough value in the first product to enable us to continue. This product will give us the knowledge about the layout rules we need to ensure the engine is robust enough. We need the cashflow to continue building the larger system. We will create marketing collateral, pricing and mockup in order to get meetings and validate with customers.

Part 4: Holding Both

The final check — making sure you’re neither planning indefinitely nor building without direction.

Am I thinking big enough?
Look back at your end-state description. Is it genuinely ambitious, or is it a slightly better version of today? Push yourself here.

Honest assessment:
What "bigger" would look like:

Am I building small enough?
Is the first phase genuinely achievable in a reasonable timeframe (8–12 weeks for a first phase is a useful benchmark), or have you already let the ambition expand into the first build?

Estimated timeline for phase one:
Whether that feels achievable or already too large:

Online Version

Want to go deeper?
The online version of this tool includes a full architectural planning template, a guide for running the “franchise prototype” exercise with your leadership team, and a workshop format for aligning ambition and pragmatism across departments.
Available in the members area at [website]