Do we have to do a BA Practice Maturity Assessment? We already know we are a Level 1 maturity (AdHoc).

by Kitty Hass

The answer……Absolutely. Knowing your organization’s BA practices are adhoc and immature is not enough, because simply knowing is not actionable. Similar to stepping on a scale and seeing an undesirable number on the dial, you know you need to lose weight, but how? It’s one thing to know you need improvement, and another very different thing to know how to put a roadmap together that has real positive impacts to you and your organization. When all BA practices are immature, where do you start?

An organizational maturity assessment is an effective strategy for improving BA practices because it produces an achievement oriented roadmap for improvements that is customized to an organization’s culture, current situation, and business goals.  Good assessments should provide answers to questions such as:

• How can our BA practices enable us to achieve even higher levels of profit, better achieve our mission, and meet our strategic goals and objectives
• What are our critical strengths and weaknesses?
• What areas do we need to concentrate on so that we can immediately increase business benefits from projects?

o   Do we need to change our existing BA practices,

o   add new tools and technologies, or

o   provide additional training for our staff?

How can we best serve our customers and attain both project and organizational success in terms of value to our customers and wealth to our organization?

Once you Understand your Current Situation, then what?

To lose weight effectively and become fit, you must first evaluate your current health status, physical capabilities, nutritional status, etc., to develop your fitness plan. The same is true for achieving BA practice maturity. Science-based assessments should be used for your evaluation. They provide guidance for efficient, effective improvement across a single or multiple disciplines for a project, a program, a business unit or an organization.  Maturity

assessments help an organization:

• Understand its current situation in terms of capabilities
• Establish a capability baseline
• Benchmark your capabilities against competitors in your industry to reveal your marketplace position
• Identify appropriate areas for improvement
• Select high-priority improvement actions, and
• Build organizational readiness for change.  

Why care about Mature Capabilities?

There is no question that optimal physical fitness is directly correlated with fewer health problems and increased quality of life and longevity. The same is true of more mature BA practices. Higher maturity levels are directly correlated to more effective business alignment of projects, higher quality business solutions, increased customer satisfaction, increased creativity and innovation, and an increase in the business benefits that result from implementation of new business solutions. According to the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), specifically, maturity assessments that imbed scientific verification consistently bring about these benefits:

• Improved budget and schedule predictability 
• Improved cycle time 
• Increased productivity
• Improved quality (as measured by defects)
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Improved team morale
• Decreased cost of quality
• Increased return on project investment in terms of value to the customer and wealth to the organization.

I don’t think any one of us would argue that our organization could not use a few more of these benefits, just as we all could use the long-term benefits provided by optimal fitness. Remember, always start your organization’s journey to BA practice maturity with a thorough, scientific assessment. Don’t simply hop on a treadmill, as most people do, and hope for the best!