Week 14: Maturity Models

Maturity models are a way to assess how well an organization is doing in a particular area.  In this field, there are many different maturity models but two (COBIT 5 and ITIL) that you are sure to run into.  COBIT 5 is all about the control processes as you now know and ITIL is about how to run IT services.  Each will give you an idea about how to assess an organization’s relative strength in an area.

The basic idea, using COBIT 5 as an example, is that there are different levels of maturity for each process.  The lowest level, 0, indicates that the process doesn’t exist in a complete form.  Level 1 indicates that the process exists and produces results, but is completely informal.  In Level 2,  the informal process is managed (ie planned, monitored and adjusted) but still not formally defined.  Level 3 is when they formal process emerges and it is generally followed.  A level 4 process becomes predictable (remember your TQL terminology) and operates within defined limits.  Finally, Level 5 is where the process is well defined, controlled, and is continuously improved to meet current challenges.

No organization has enough time and resources to take any maturity model and implement it fully.  Trying to do so would be a poor allocation of IT resources.  What most companies do is to pick one or two areas upon which to focus each year.  They do an assessment of these areas and them implement whatever improvements are needed.  In this way they continuously improved the organization’s performance without breaking the bank.