Tool-to-capability mappings

A mapping is the link between one tool and one capability it supports. Mappings are the heart of the Forest Map, because they turn a list of products into a picture of what your program can actually do.

Capabilities remain the source of truth. A tool matters in Forest only to the extent that it supports capabilities, such as Patch Management or Identity Provisioning. One tool can map to several capabilities, and one capability can be supported by several tools. Those many-to-many links are what reveal both coverage and overlap.

Mappings drive three things you rely on:

• Coverage, meaning which capabilities have at least one tool behind them

• Gaps, meaning capabilities with no supporting tool

• Overlap, meaning capabilities supported by more than one tool

The quality of your mappings sets the quality of everything the Map tells you. A missing mapping makes a covered capability look like a gap. An inflated mapping makes a tool look more useful than it is. This is why Forest distinguishes between mappings it has pre-populated and mappings you have confirmed, explained in Confirmed vs inferred mappings.

Map a tool to a capability only if the tool genuinely performs that function in your environment. Owning a feature is not the same as using it.

Mappings describe what a tool covers. They do not by themselves set a maturity score. How well a capability is performed comes from your CAMP assessment, while the Map shows whether tooling exists to support it. Together they explain both the gap and the reason for it. From here, review how Forest reads multiple mappings as overlap.