Your approach to DevOps is likely to be influenced by the methods and practices that came before. In this article, I explain why a maturity model isn’t appropriate and what you should use instead.
Your approach to DevOps is likely to be influenced by the methods and practices that came before. For organizations that gave teams autonomy to adapt their process, DevOps would have been a natural progression. Where an organization has been more prescriptive in the past, people will look for familiar tools to run a DevOps implementation, such as maturity models.
In this article, I explain why a maturity model isn’t appropriate and what you should use instead.What Is a Maturity Model?
A maturity model represents groups of characteristics, like processes or activities, into a sequence of maturity levels. By following the groups from the easiest to the most advanced, an organization can implement all the required elements of the model. The process is a journey from adoption through to maturity.
Maturity models:
Provide a roadmap for adopting characteristics
Make it easier to get started by suggesting a smaller initial set of characteristics
Can be assessed to provide the organization with a maturity score
For example, a maturity model for riding a bike might have 5 levels of maturity:
Walk upright on 2 legs
Ride a balance bike with a walking motion
Ride a balance bike with both feet off the ground
Ride a pedal bike from a starting point facing downhill
Ride a pedal bike from a starting point facing uphill
The sequence of maturity levels is a useful roadmap to follow and you may already be able to achieve the lower levels. Each maturity level is easier to reach from the level below, as the earlier levels provide a basis for increasing your skills and progressing to the next stage. You can also assess someone by asking them to demonstrate their ability at each level.
You can create a maturity model by designing the levels first and expanding each with characteristics, or you can collect together all the characteristics before arranging them into levels.
You’ll find maturity models are commonly used as part of standards and their certification process. Most process certifications require you to demonstrate that:
You have documented your process
People follow the documented process
You regularly review and improve the process
When you plan to achieve a certification, your roadmap is clear; until you document the process you can’t tell if people are following it.Limitations of Maturity Models
You can use a maturity model to assess whether a set of activities is taking place, but not whether these activities impact your key outcomes. Maturity models are rigid and require you to adopt all characteristics to achieve maturity levels. You have to trust that following the model will bring you the same benefits experienced by the model’s authors.
The sequence of maturity levels might not work for everyone. They could slow down your progress or even have counter-productive outcomes. A maturity model doesn’t take into account the unique challenges facing your business — it may not even solve the kind of problems you’re facing.
