What Does the Sketch Do That The Estimation does Not?

The difference between the Maturity Estimation and the Maturity Sketch is like the difference between a professional photo and a manual sketch. A professional photo provides every detail according to the chosen resolution. For instance, a photo of an empty room shows all the details of the empty room – utilizing all resources of the camera and millions of pixels. A manual sketch, on the other hand, provides enough information to get a picture of the empty room, but doesn’t show every last detail. However, it does show the necessary details, but without the expensive equipment required by a professional photo. When applied to the question of process existence and maturity, the Maturity Sketch roughly outlines where things are at. Although it’s relatively “quick and rough”, it is still precise enough to indicate where the process maturity gaps are.

Process Maturity Sketch

The image shows an example of a “sketched” organization, being made up of the process teams A – K. Without going into details, it can quickly be seen that the teams’ process maturity levels are quite different. Some of them have almost nothing in place; whereas others do have a basis in place, however it still strongly needs enhancement. Given the interdependence of teams, it is usually the case that a team with a poor Maturity Estimation score will impact the ability of the other teams to improve.

That is essentially what a Process Maturity Sketch shows. The next step up from this is provided by the >> Process Maturity Estimation, which highlights similar findings, however it goes into more detail and is especially useful for organizations that have already made some progress with their process maturity.

Leveraging the Advantage

The recommended approach is to initially undertake a Sketch, draw conclusions from it and the implement the necessary changes. Following this, it is worth performing the Process Maturity Estimation periodically to assess the ongoing maturity.

Finally, in the case of a process roll-out to other locations, a Process Establishment Sketch (similar to the Maturity Sketch) can be undertaken to check if the defined process is actually in place, rather than investigating the process itself.