Do you remember when you were young ? Did someone give you an Adulthood Maturity Model and told you to slavishly work your way up the curve ?
Didn’t think so.
So when it comes to business maturity models; whether CRM, BPM, Cloud or any other such industry vertical why is it we religiously follow what someone has drawn up and ignore gut feel and common sense. Take the Gartner BPM Maturity Model as an example.
Here we have a typical analyst cycle for an organization to follow and achieve the pinnacle of BPM perfection. And yet they admit, of all those surveyed against the model 1% have reached Level 4 and none have managed to level up to 5. Why is that ?
Take a look at Level 4 for example and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a vendor, let alone an organisation, that can completely fulfil these requirements: “Measure, monitor and adjust operational processes in real-time”.
The problem here is that for the most part analysts build these models on constantly shifting sands; they are forever updating their own predictions and market definitions to the point that by the time you spend the required amount of money and expend the necessary blood, sweat and tears to get the medal of honour the enterprise world has moved on and so has the maturity model.
Don’t you feel a little like Sisyphus ?
Every organization is different, every business cannot possibly fit their ambitions and capabilities to match the curve and it’s definitely no bad thing to know that you can’t. Maturity models like this only exist to fuel spending, not your growth in real terms.
Don’t continually push that boulder up the maturity curve to watch it roll down the hill again a year later.
