Structured frameworks for progressively assessing and improving organizational capabilities, from CMMI to modern approaches like DORA and simplified models.
A maturity model is a framework that describes a progression of capabilities in a specific domain. It defines discrete levels representing increasingly sophisticated states, allowing an organization to locate itself on the scale and chart a path for improvement.
The fundamental premise: you can't improve what you can't measure, and you can't measure without a frame of reference.
Developed by Carnegie Mellon's SEI in the 90s, CMMI is the grandfather of maturity models. It defines 5 levels:
| Level | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Initial | Unpredictable, reactive processes |
| 2 | Managed | Processes managed at the project level |
| 3 | Defined | Processes standardized at the organizational level |
| 4 | Quantitatively Managed | Processes measured and controlled |
| 5 | Optimizing | Continuous improvement based on data |
CMMI was revolutionary in its time. It introduced the idea that organizations mature predictably and that maturation can be accelerated with specific practices. But it has real problems:
Similar to CMMI but focused on IT service management. Same 5-level scale, same complexity problems. Useful as a reference but rarely fully implemented outside large corporations.
DORA shifted the paradigm by focusing on outcome metrics rather than process practices. It defines 4 key metrics:
And classifies teams into 4 performance levels (Elite, High, Medium, Low) based on these metrics.
What DORA got right:
What DORA doesn't cover:
A lightweight model where teams assess their health across dimensions like speed, quality, fun, and learning using a traffic light system (green/yellow/red). Simple and effective for generating conversation, but subjective and hard to aggregate at the organizational level.
Focused on team structure and interactions. Assesses whether teams are organized as stream-aligned, platform, enabling, or complicated-subsystem teams. Useful for evaluating organizational topology but not technical practices.
The sweet spot depends on context. For a 5-person team, Spotify Health Check is enough. For a 500-person organization that needs benchmarks across teams, something more structured is needed.
Most organizations don't need CMMI's granularity. What they need is:
A 3-level system (Not Started / Partial / Complete) with explicit success criteria achieves this at a fraction of the cognitive cost. The question for each item reduces to: does it exist or not? Is it complete or not?
Simplification has a trade-off: you lose granularity in the intermediate levels. But in practice, the difference between a "3" and a "4" on a 5-point scale is where most unproductive discussions happen.
See AxiSight for a practical implementation of this simplified approach.
| Need | Recommended model |
|---|---|
| Quick team conversation | Spotify Health Check |
| Objective delivery metrics | DORA |
| Broad assessment with quick action | 3-level model (AxiSight) |
| Formal certification / compliance | CMMI |
| Organizational structure | Team Topologies |
Maturity models provide a common language for evaluating where a team is and where it should go. Without them, improvement conversations are subjective. With them, improvement investments are prioritized with criteria.
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