Putting together a Puzzle is Like Building a Capability Roadmap

Last night, I had a bit of epiphany while I was putting together a puzzle with my husband. I became conscious of how I would approach the challenge of combining the different pieces of a puzzle into the picture of the Strip. (Note: We discovered that the written description on the bottom of the puzzle was different on the puzzle from what was displayed on the box front. Oops! Production error) Here's the rough order of steps that I observed myself making as I put together the puzzle:

(1) Scan the pile of pieces and identify two or three "theme"s by which some set of pieces can be separated out.

(2) Put all of the pieces that match a particular theme into a pile

(3) Select some way to organize the pieces in one pile (e.g. if you're working with the edge of a puzzle; put all of the straight-edged sides facing down)

(4) Pick some characteristic of the pieces by which to start matching pieces with their neighbors. For example; the Lines on the side of the Wynn became a charateristic that I could start to match up.

(5) If you hit a wall; find some other charactertistic and put a few more pieces together.

(6) If all else fails; pick a piece and then try to find its neighbor. Try all rotations of a piece to see if it fits as the neighbor.

(7) Repeat until puzzle is done.

It dawned on me that there is something to be learned about how to put together a capability roadmap. Its easy to state a methodology for building a roadmap. it is much more difficult to break that methodology down into a methodical set of best practices to implement the methodology. For example; most SOA methodologies specifies the need to "Identify all of your core capabilities." The questions that comes to mind are:
(1) What are some criteria to use to determine if something is core?
(2) How might we differentiate between a capability and an application/process?
(3) How might we identify which capabilities are needed but missing?
(4) If we discover multiple missing capabilities; in what order should we build them out?
(5) How might we determine different alternative execution plans to deliver capabilities at the right time?
(6) How might we determine when a capability should be replaced?

By finding the parallels in the challenge between building a capability roadmap and putting together a puzzle, I realized that I could find a way to apply the methods I used in the puzzle to making a plan to build a capability roadmap. For example, I can line up the questions I want to have answered and solve for each like I would putting together a group of like puzzle pieces. Then I can take those larger groups of pieces and put them together. This tactic worked EVEN IF I DIDN'T HAVE A PERFECT UNDERSTANDING OF THE FINAL PICTURE. Instead, I needed to identify some pattern in the pieces that would help me put them together.