Assessing IT maturity using the "stairway to heaven" maturity models
Download
Date
Authors
Type
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Model builders
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The automotive industry has undergone major changes during the last decade due
to digitalization. As software has become more integrated into modern cars, the
automotive firms have been forced to transform their businesses into being able to
develop software on a large scale. As a part of the effort to improve their software development
processes, a software intensive R&D business unit (the R&D BU) within
an automotive company has set out to gain a better understanding of their current
capabilities. In this study, we aim to help the R&D BU to understand their software
development capabilities by performing an IT maturity assessment of the business
unit. Based on the assessment, we also provide the R&D BU with recommendations
on what steps to take in order to improve these capabilities.
Our findings indicate that most of the teams within the R&D BU score low on
the maturity assessment due to three main reasons. The first reason is that the
teams within the R&D BU are developing safety critical systems, which require a
high amount of documentation and traceability due to regulatory constraints. These
characteristics makes it hard to improve their IT maturity by adapting agile practices,
which is the next logical transition. The second reason for the low maturity
assessment score is that the teams currently lack the capabilities to frequently integrate
and test small chunks of newly developed code. Finally, the third reason for
why the teams score low on the IT maturity assessment is that they have not yet
come far in automating the collection and analysis of user data.
In addition to conducting the IT maturity assessment, the models used for the
assessment have been extensively evaluated and discussed in this report. In order to
help practitioners to apply the maturity models, we have created a set of questions
that translates the criteria from the models into a practical assessment tool. This
contribution is the first published attempt to provide questions that can guide the
application of the models to a practical setting.
Description
Keywords
Agile Development, Continuous Integration, Data Driven Development, IT Maturity Assessment Models, The Stairway to Heaven