Redesigning Maturity Models When Rolling Out Agile Transformations

Abstract

Agile is conquering the competitive and fast-changing world. It benefits mandate that the implementation of a transformation to agile working is implemented as agile as can be. An important element of such a transformation is setting an improvement target: The first step an organization has to take to start working agile. One of the techniques for setting such a target is the use of maturity models (MMs), where maturity levels indicate the smart stops on the way to an ideal situation. This study finds that the traditional and external MM designs create a large gap between management targets and work floor reality. Therefore, a new method to create MM models has been introduced herein in an Agile setting to provide an easy-to-use yet powerful assessment tool for organizations. This model could not only reflect the uniqueness of the organization but also modify this uniqueness for the requirements of Agile transformations. The developed model is compared with the alternatives in literature, providing highly competitive performance with enhanced simplicity. It is clearly confirmed that the gap between top-down target setting and bottom-up achievement was sharply reduced when the structure of the MM was modified.