Digital Maturity

by Alexander von Boguszewski

Maturity models have been of interest in organisational development for many years. They accompany the development of complex organisations and maintain the capabilities necessary to fulfil an organisation’s envisaged purpose. But why exactly do enterprises need maturity models in the context of digital transformation?

Organisational maturity is an indicator for the achievability of transformational success

Most importantly, organisational maturity serves as an indicator of the probability of the transformation’s success. It allows management to decide on a transformation strategy, including preliminary activities to strengthen the organisation prior to digitalisation, or starting with a transformation nucleus within the company as opposed to acquiring another company that already provides the desired capabilities. In the context of theories of stage-based evolution, their basic purpose consists of describing stages and maturation paths. Based on the assumption of predictable patterns of organisational quality, maturity models represent how an organisation evolves in a stage-by-stage process along an anticipated, desired or logical path.

A well-known example of a maturity model is the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), released in 2002 by the CMMI Software Engineering Institute of the Carnegie Mellon University.[1] The focus here lies on improving an organisation’s business performance. Since Version 3, the model has offered three application-related areas of interest: acquisition (ACQ), development (DEV) and services (SVC). Another example is ISO 9000, initially released in 1987, and ISO/IEC 15504 (also known as SPICE),[2] initially released in 1998, both by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Other specialised models are also relevant, such as PEM (Project Execution Model) for projects or BPMM (Business Process Maturity Model) for processes. Such standards provide help to organisations who want to ensure that their products and services continuously meet customers’ requirements and that their quality is constantly improved.[3]

CMMI and ISO provide industry-proven maturity models

The standardised principles of quality management include customer focus, leadership, engagement of people, process approach, improvement, evidence-based decision-making and relationship management.[4]

The focus of this book is the well-known CMMI, with a deeper look into the CMMI-DEV model. CMMI models are tools for helping organisations to improve their way of working holistically and provide guidelines to assure a stable and capable process. For each process area defined in the model, a list of specific goals and practices is defined. It is important to note that CMMI only defines ‘what’ an effective and efficient organisation does. The model does not make any statement about the ‘how’, which every organisation must come up with according to their business principles. The maturity level represents the evolution stage of the process improvements in a predefined set of process areas. For every maturity level, the level of achievement is measured against a set of goals that apply to the respective process area.

A digital enterprise mainly operates at Level 4, characterised by well-defined processes and quantitative performance analysis, referring to the data-driven approach of digital companies. Level 4 stands in contrast to lower maturity levels, where processes are not properly defined and results are not predictable. Level 4 provides sufficient stability to automate processes.

At a higher level of maturity, Level 5 organisations exhibit very stable, self-optimising processes that are, however, not ?exible enough in a fast-changing digital world.

Spin-off, nucleus and acquisition are approaches to increasing the organisational maturity level

Being digitally mature has many facets, although the characteristics of digital maturity can be postulated:

First, digital enterprises require a different form of cross-departmental cooperation. It is a characteristic of a mature organisation to exhibit the capability of accomplishing these new communication and decision ?ows. Second, digital enterprises must be able to adapt swiftly to changing process requirements. On the technical side, IT interfaces and work?ows are core; on the human side, interaction variability is core. Finally, being digitally mature means not only being able to automate processes, but also doing it so that it is fully ?exible. This requires a depth of understanding, a formal description and a system of measurement of the processes. At the same time, processes must remain adaptable. In traditional processes, humans can fill in any gaps in process definitions or handle unforeseen situations. In the digital world, the situation is profoundly different. No human interference can compensate for a deficiency by adapting behaviour, and an intelligent system must provide this compensation. Digital enterprises need to develop their business systematically and formally by using smart processes and intelligent systems

[1]        Chrissis, M. B., Konrad, M., Shrum, S.: ‘CMMI for Development: Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement’, 3rd ed., Addisson Wesley, 2011.

[2]        Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (SPICE) is a joint standard of ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

[3]        Badiru, A. B.: ‘Industry Guide to ISO 9000’, John Wiley & Sons, p. 22ff, 1995.

[4]        ISO Central Secretariat: ‘Quality management principles’, International Organization for Standardization, 2015.

About the Author

Alexander von Boguszewski has been engrossed in digital technology since the beginning of the millennium. After his studies in computer science and economics, he worked as an IT consultant in areas across the tech sphere, mostly in system integration and process digitalisation.

About 'Modelling for Digital: Best Practices for Digital Transformation in Everyday Project Life [Practitioner Edition]'

In this edition, we focus on the practitioner. We mean those colleagues, who conduct the day-to-day work in the concrete projects delivering digital capabilities. Some aspects presented here are very specific to digitalisation projects, while others are general best practices in projects and hence also apply to digitalisation projects. In digitalisation undertakings, however, speed is of the essence, and a certain explorative approach must be chosen in order to match the needs of the customers best. At the same time, security is a pervasive challenge, as is compliance.

About the 'Digital Cookbook' series

Digitalisation is highly relevant in our private and business lives, and it is better to face up to the changes it drives. Setting aside the sociological, cultural and macroeconomic changes driven by digitalisation in our societies, our focus here is on the microeconomic impacts on our businesses. It is probably the biggest upheaval for society and the economy in this century. 

Altogether, 'Modelling for Digital', 'Managing for Digital' and 'Digital in Action' assist you in the shaping, planning and execution of a comprehensive transformation of the status quo (and you should not settle for less). It will accompany you and your business in meeting this challenge, to open up opportunities unthinkable even just a couple of years ago. It provides the context and best practices for such initiatives from a variety of industries, businesses and viewpoints, strategic, functional, operational, technical and executional. The authors lay out a general, abstracted vision of digitalization across different industries.

About the authors of the 'Digital Cookbook' series

Dirk Krafzig spent the greatest part of his professional life working for large enterprises. As the author of the bestselling book 'Enterprise SOA – Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices', Dirk coined the term 'SOA' and the concepts behind it in 2004. Today almost all large organisations in the world apply service orientation as the foundation of their enterprise architecture. Since 2007, Dirk has been running his own company, SOAPARK, which specialises in strategy consulting in the area of digital transformation and SOA.

Manas K. Deb is currently the Business Head of Cloud Computing at Capgemini/Europe. He is a veteran of the software industry with more than 30 years of experience including deep work in development, product management, architecture, management of transformative customer projects, and sales and marketing. During his career at TIBCO and Oracle, he focused on the whole spectrum of middleware technologies.

Martin Frick is currently COO at Generali Switzerland. He has held executive positions in large multinational corporations, BPO service companies and start-up incubators in international settings, with a focus on IT and operations in financial services. He has been responsible for large-scale business build-up initiatives and turnaround situations in large organisations, always with a strong need for pervasive change management.