Assessing IT maturity using the "stairway to heaven" maturity models

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.