Question 1

What is a process maturity assessment?

Accepted Answer

It rates how capable a process is against a recognised maturity ladder, then judges that capability against what your context actually needs. This assessment uses five capability levels in the CMMI tradition (Initial, Managed, Defined, Quantitatively Managed, Optimising) across six dimensions, and constrains the overall result to the weakest dimension, the way an assessor would read it.

Question 2

What is it built on?

Accepted Answer

Four recognised foundations. Capability levels follow the CMMI tradition adopted by COBIT and ITIL maturity models. Proportionality comes from COBIT 2019's design-factor approach: your context sets the target, not a fixed bar. Flow economics (work time divided by elapsed time) comes from Lean, where office processes routinely run below 5% flow efficiency. Evidence grading comes from audit practice: every rating declares its basis and the tool grades its own reliability.

Question 3

Which processes can I assess?

Accepted Answer

Any operational or governance process. Common choices are Change Management and the CAB, the Technical Design Authority, Incident and Major Incident Management, Problem Management, Service Request and Joiner-Mover-Leaver, Asset and Configuration Management, Release and Deployment, Vendor Management, Patch and Backup. You can also name your own.

Question 4

How is the target level decided?

Accepted Answer

Five context questions (organisation size, regulatory environment, criticality, volume, and rate of change) set a proportionate target of Level 2, 3 or 4. A small firm running a process monthly should not be marked like a regulated enterprise running it hourly. You can override the recommendation by one level with a stated reason that appears in the findings.

Question 5

What do you get?

Accepted Answer

Your assessed maturity against your proportionate target, a combined verdict (Fit and Lean, Under-developed, Gold-plated, or Process Theatre), flow economics including the optimisation ceiling, a bureaucracy diagnosis from eight observable signals, a sequenced route that fixes the weakest dimension first, and an honest grade of how reliable your own answers are.

Question 6

Is this a substitute for an audit?

Accepted Answer

No. It is a structured self-assessment, and self-assessments flatter. The behavioural anchors and the evidence declaration reduce self-marking bias but do not remove it; an owner assessing their own process is capped at moderate reliability. For anything that will support a real decision, re-run it with someone independent of the process and compare.

Every process is a trade: speed against control, cost against risk. This tells you which side yours is on.