A Cognitive map of Maturity: Symptom-based improvement recommendations

When an experienced assessor enters a company there are certain characteristic symptoms that reveals the maturity of the company even before the assessment. In this paper we start out from a list of 32 characteristic symptomatic problems generated by two experienced assessors after maturity assessments in more than 300 companies. We then use cognitive mapping asking five times why to get behind the symptomatic problems and reveal the underlying problems or causes of the problems. Our mapping revealed a number of interesting relationships between the symptomatic problems. We then evaluated our findings by building a tool in the form of a website where users could score statements - formulated from the symptoms - and from that we could point them to areas where they probably needed to improve. We improved the tool in three learning cycles of design evaluation and ended up in a summative evaluation where we compared the outcome of using the website tool with a CMMI maturity assessment. We conclude that looking for symptoms, and as an individual scoring statements build on the symptoms, can point to improvement areas. However, doing so is not a replacement for a maturity assessment, the scoring of statements cannot necessarily reveal the maturity of the organization.