Interpreting continuous‐view capability models for higher levels of maturity

When assessing an organization's process maturity using a continuous‐view model like the three systems engineering capability models, the capability of each process area is rated separately. This view can be very helpful to lower‐maturity organizations because it provides an improvement path that can address one area at a time according to business needs. However, rating process areas separately makes less sense for more mature organizations because their processes map less cleanly to process areas and because process improvement is best applied across an organization's processes to address strategic business needs. This paper first makes the case that, for organizations at Level 3 or 4 maturity, the business processes themselves are what should be rated, rather than the process areas of the model. The rating process consists of two steps: verifying that the processes cover the base practices, and then rating the maturity of the processes. The paper then provides an interpretation of how the term “Level 4” or “Level 5” should be applied to an organization as a whole. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Syst Eng 2: 15–31, 1999