Planning capture

Planning Capture

Build and maintain the capture plan — the living document that drives pre-RFP work to raise probability of win. A capture plan is not a report. It is an action system: its real output is a set of assigned, dated actions that change the team's position before the RFP releases. A capture plan with no actions, or actions with no owners and no dates, is decoration.

When to use this skill

Use this skill after a pursuit decision (see qualifying-opportunities) when the opportunity will be actively pursued and the team needs to organize capture work: understanding the customer, shaping the requirement, closing intelligence gaps, securing teaming partners, and tracking it all to gate reviews.

Re-run it throughout the capture phase to update the plan as intelligence arrives and actions close.

Related skills this one does not replace:

• analyzing-competitors: the deep Black Hat competitive assessment. The capture plan summarizes and links to it.
• estimating-price-to-win: the price-to-win analysis.
• developing-win-strategy: the win themes and discriminators. The capture plan references the win strategy; it does not derive it.

This skill is the hub; those three are spokes. The capture plan integrates them.

Inputs

Preferred upstream artifacts:

• 00-opportunity-profile.md and 01-bid-decision.md — the opportunity facts and the pursuit rationale. Read them first; do not re-ask what they answer.
• 03-competitive-assessment.md, 04-price-to-win.md, 05-win-strategy.md — if they exist, summarize and link them. If they do not, the capture plan records them as planned capture actions.

Without them, run the intake below to establish the opportunity facts, then build the plan, flagging the missing analyses as actions to commission.

Read ../../shared/glossary.md, ../../shared/proposal-lifecycle.md, and ../../shared/pursuit-workspace.md if not already read this session.

Intake

Ask these as a numbered list. Skip what upstream artifacts already answer.

1. The customer. Which agency, program office, and end user? What is their mission and the problem this acquisition is meant to solve? Who are the known decision-makers, influencers, and the likely contracting officer?
2. Customer relationship and engagement to date. What contact has the team had? Any meetings, RFI responses, white papers, capability briefings, or draft-RFP comments? What is the current access?
3. The requirement and acquisition. What is known about scope, likely contract type and value, anticipated RFP timing, set-aside status, and contract vehicle? Is a draft RFP, RFI, or sources-sought notice available?
4. Position and gaps. What are the team's strengths and weaknesses for this pursuit? Where is past performance thin? What capability or qualification gaps would require teaming?
5. What is unknown. What does the team not know about the customer's hot buttons, budget, incumbent satisfaction, evaluation intent, or competitive field? These unknowns become intelligence actions.
6. Capture resources and timeline. Who is on the capture team, and what gate reviews and dates are the pursuit working toward?

Unknowns are the most valuable answers here. The capture plan's job is to close them.

Workflow

Capture Planning:
- [ ] Step 1: Read upstream artifacts; complete intake
- [ ] Step 2: Analyze the customer and the requirement
- [ ] Step 3: Assess our position; identify intelligence gaps
- [ ] Step 4: Define the customer engagement / call plan
- [ ] Step 5: Define teaming actions
- [ ] Step 6: Build the capture action list (owners, dates, gates)
- [ ] Step 7: Write the capture plan (02-capture-plan.md) and validate

Step 1: Read and intake. Read the upstream artifacts. Run intake only for what they do not cover.

Step 2: Customer and requirement. Build the customer analysis using references/capture-plan-structure.md: mission, organization, decision-makers, known hot buttons and biases, budget signals, and how the requirement is likely to evolve. Mark each item as known, assessed (inferred), or unknown.

Step 3: Position and gaps. Record the team's strengths and weaknesses for this specific customer and requirement. Then list intelligence gaps — the specific things the team does not know that would change the win strategy or pWin. Each gap becomes a capture action in Step 6.

Step 4: Customer engagement plan. Build the call plan using references/customer-engagement.md: which customer contacts to engage, the objective of each engagement, the legitimate shaping vehicles available (RFI responses, white papers, capability briefings, draft-RFP comments), and the timing relative to RFP release. Stay within the ethical and legal limits stated in that file.

Step 5: Teaming. From the capability and past-performance gaps in Step 3, define what the team needs from partners, candidate partners, and the actions to secure teaming agreements before they constrain the bid.

Step 6: Capture action list. Convert every gap, engagement, and teaming need into a concrete action with an owner, a due date, and the gate it supports. This list is the heart of the plan. An action without an owner and a date is not an action.

Step 7: Write and validate. Write 02-capture-plan.md using templates/capture-plan.md. Run that template's validation checklist: every plan section is present, every customer fact is marked known/assessed/unknown, every intelligence gap has a corresponding action, and every action has an owner and a date. Revise until it passes.

Output

One artifact: 02-capture-plan.md in the pursuit workspace — a living document updated throughout capture.

Present the user with: the capture plan summary, the most important intelligence gaps, the next customer engagements, and the highest-priority actions due before the next gate.

References

• references/capture-plan-structure.md: the full capture plan structure and what each section must contain.
• references/customer-engagement.md: building a customer call plan, legitimate requirement-shaping vehicles, and the ethical and legal limits on customer contact.
• templates/capture-plan.md: the capture plan artifact template and its validation checklist.

Guardrails

• Actions, not prose. The plan's value is the action list. Resist producing a polished narrative with no assigned, dated actions.
• Mark what is known vs. assumed. Never present an inferred customer hot button as established fact. Label assessments as assessments.
• Stay inside the ethical line. Requirement shaping and customer engagement are legitimate, but procurement integrity rules are strict. Follow the limits in references/customer-engagement.md; never recommend seeking source-selection-sensitive or non-public competitor information.
• The capture plan is sensitive. It holds competitive and customer intelligence. It stays in the git-ignored pursuit workspace.