DutchMeasuring Enterprise Architecture Maturity
Capability Maturity Models (CMMs) are used to measure the maturity of organisations in various ways.
There are CMMs for software engineering, system engineering, project management, software maintenance, risk management, system acquisition, information technology (IT), services, business processes generally, and human capital management. Because several CMMs are used in an organisation a more overall CMM was created, called Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), providing a general maturity level to an organisation. The terms CMM and CMMI are developed by the Carnegie Mellon University. CMMs usually have 5 levels:
- Initial
- Repeatable
- Defined
- Managed
- Optimized
When looking for a maturity model for enterprise architecture, I found several architectural CMMs:
- US DoC ACMM
- US GAO EAMMF
- E2AMM
All of these provide a matrix that describes levels of maturity and the topics to measure the maturity. I found the E2AMM matrix the most useful. Using the matrix provided architects can value their maturity and find what measures must be taken to improve the maturity of their enterprise architecture organisation.
It is not uncommon to have various levels of maturity on the topics when the matrix is filled in. A consistent maturity level over all topics in the future is not needed as well. Enterprises can decide to value some topics as more important than others. They can for example decide to have a generic maturity level of 3 for all topics, but maturity level 4 for some that are found most important.
It would be an interesting exersise to fill-in the E2AMM maturity matrix (or one of the other ones if you like) for your own organisation, just to see where you are and what could be enhanced.
This entry was posted on Sunday 14 February 2010
