Using enterprise architecture model analysis and description logics for maturity assessment

Abstract

A Maturity Model represents a path towards an increasingly organized and systematic way of doing business. It is therefore a widely used technique valuable to assess certain aspects of organizations, as for example business processes. A maturity assessment can enable stakeholders to clearly identify strengths and improvement points, and prioritize actions in order to reach higher maturity levels. Doing maturity assessments can range from simple self-assessment questionnaires to full-blown assessment methods, such as those recommended by the ISO/IEC 15504 or the SEI CMMI. A main caveat of these assessments is the resources they encompass. In addition, many times the lack of automation renders benchmarks not possible. Assuming that the wide spread of Enterprise Architecture practices is making the modeling of business domains a fact, and considering the recent state of the art on the representation of those models as ontologies, this paper proposes how existing semantic technology can be used to automate maturity models assessment methods.