The allure of attaining the highest agile maturity scores can inadvertently lead organisations down a path that hinders rather than helps them achieve true agility.
When the goal becomes meeting prescriptive criteria on maturity assessments, it fosters a compliance mindset rather than catalyzing real cultural change. This misguided focus on numerical scores shifts attention away from the underlying principles and continuous improvement that should be at the heart of agility.
The Appeal of Maturity Models
Maturity models in agile software development, such as the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integration and Scaled Agile’s Portfolio Scaled Agile Framework, aim to provide organisations with a structured pathway for incremental improvement. By laying out progressive stages and clear benchmarks, these frameworks map out what an ideal agile transformation journey could look like.
For many, this paints an enticing picture. The defined stages promise a clear direction, while the detailed criteria offer a reassuring sense you are covering all the necessary bases. Achieving the next level seems like a definitive measure of progress, providing the satisfaction of ticking requirements off a list. With roadmaps and matrices spelling out exactly what to work on, it appears you cannot fail if you simply follow the prescribed steps.
When those steps lead to impressive sounding high maturity scores, it can easily be perceived both within and outside your organisation as a mark of how successfully ‘agile’ you have become. The numerical rating indicates how closely you adhere to the ‘correct’ agile practices, with the highest score signalling you have reached agile enlightenment.
With this emphasis on comprehensive criteria and ambitious maturity targets, it is understandable why many find maturity models appealing. They suggest a straightforward journey where diligently following instructions leads to an impressive destination.
The Shortfalls of a Checklist Mindset
The problem is, while maturity models may point you in a direction, rigidly following a predetermined path can divert you from reaching true agility. When treated prescriptively as an exhaustive checklist, maturity assessments lead to going through the motions of agile without internalising its heart.
At its core, agility is about adaptability, flexibility, and a growth mindset. It is less about mindlessly implementing textbook processes and more about continuously striving to improve how you work. To nurture agility is to foster an experimental, evolving culture receptive to change, not forcibly implement a defined blueprint.
However, in the pursuit of the highest maturity scores, organisations often find themselves taking a compliance-driven approach. They zero in on fulfilling a set of detailed criteria that demonstrate textbook agile characteristics. Their focus narrows to optimising processes and practices to pass conformance audits rather than optimising for business value.
While following standardised best practices is prudent, maturity assessment criteria often go beyond this into prescriptive rituals. For example, requiring iteration reviews be conducted on the exact same day every sprint, regardless of a team’s context. Or insisting stand-ups happen at the exact same time daily, even if a team finds alternate timings more beneficial. Conformance takes precedence over common sense.
These prescribed cookie-cutter practices may allow an organisation to demonstrate its ability to adhere to the letter of agile. But just going through the motions loses sight of whether teams are truly embodying its spirit of inspecting and adapting their ways of working.
Misplaced Priorities
When pursuit of the highest maturity rating becomes the goal itself, it distorts priorities around what matters most. Leaders’ attention centers on whether their teams’ processes satisfy detailed point-by-point criteria rather than if they are delivering maximum value to customers.
Iterations transform into elaborate performances to impress assessors rather than experiments to learn and improve. Energy is drained from enhancing how teams work into an anxious scramble to collect ‘evidence’ confirming their adherence to prescriptive practices.
In their preoccupation with the lofty maturity targets they have set, leaders often impose overly rigid structures and top-down control rather than nurturing bottom-up change. They mandate adherence to approved processes rather than empowering teams to customise their own ways of working.
While control and standardisation have their place, taken too far they contradict the decentralised, collaborative principles underpinning agility. Imposing central edicts, even when they are ‘by the agile book’, does not engender team ownership. And compliance rarely inspires innovation.
Losing Sight of Principles
Most concerning of all, pursuing perfect maturity scores makes it all too easy to lose sight of the core mindset shift agility requires. Practices are comparatively simple to implement; effecting lasting principles-based change is far harder.
As teams get caught up in agile ceremonies and artifacts, the original values behind them fade into the background. Iteration rituals transform into empty routines rather than opportunities to inspect and adapt. Metrics become an end in themselves rather than feedback for improvement. Leadership commitment descends into control rather than nurturing culture change.
When the focus narrows to implementing a predetermined toolkit, it glosses over the need for teams to internalise agile principles themselves. The practices are there, but the empowered, experimental, customer-centric mindset has not taken root. Just as you could teach someone the rituals of a religion without them embracing its meaning, you can train teams in the motions of agile without its heart.
This risks agile maturity becoming an elaborate pageant where teams exhibit the outer forms without achieving the inner transformation. In their quest to be proclaimed ‘highly mature’, organisations succeed only in implementing agile superficially as a layer on top of legacy thinking patterns.
Consequences of Disillusionment
Once the lack of substance beneath the surface becomes apparent, disenchantment sets in. People feel like actors in an empty charade, going through the motions but seeing minimal improvement. Resentment brews towards yet more processes imposed from above. That energy could have been better directed at nurturing cultural change.
Worse, this disillusionment can become associated directly with ‘agile’, when in truth it stems from pursuing maturity ratings in a misguided way. Teams receive the message they must ‘do agile’, but not why it matters or how to unlock its benefits. They end up just checking boxes, trapped in an exhausting performance with no purpose.
The resultant cynicism leaves a lasting sour taste towards agile itself. Rather than recognising they pursued flawed paths to maturity, people risk disengaging from the entire endeavor. They discard even the beneficial principles and practices agility can offer.
By placing numerical maturity scores on a pedestal, organisations can end up destroying morale, inhibiting innovation, and alienating team members from the very approaches that could transform how they work.
Refocusing on True Agility
The key is not to throw away maturity models themselves, but to reframe how to use them. Like any tool, poorly applied they become counterproductive, but with wisdom they can guide. By shifting focus away from high scores as an end in themselves back onto agile principles, the strengths of these models can shine through.
At their best, maturity frameworks serve as roadmaps not mandates. They direct attention to important areas for improvement but do not impose set paths. Rather than chasing an arbitrary high score, pursue the outcomes your teams truly need: faster value delivery, higher quality, better morale. Use maturity criteria as inspiration to regularly inspect and adapt how you work, not prescriptions to follow blindly.
Keep your eyes on the true north of customer-centricity, trust, collaboration and continuous improvement which underpins agility. Let these principles, not pressures for proof of ‘maturity’, shape how you lead change. Model the mindset you want teams to embrace.
Help people connect more deeply to why particular practices matter rather than just what rituals to follow. Coach teams to constantly question and improve how they apply agile, keeping only what provides real benefit. Guide them to grow into agility for themselves, not impose it from the outside.
Set audacious goals for empowerment, experimentation and value delivery that push teams outside their comfort zones. Let maturity models open up possibilities without confining creativity.
If the pursuit of the ‘perfect’ maturity score starts hindering real progress, have the courage to change course. Maintain perspective on if rigorous application of by-the-book criteria has become a box-ticking exercise yielding few real returns. Bureaucratic processes siphon off energy better directed to innovation and improvement.
By taking this principles-focused approach, maturity models can positively support, not constrain, your agility journey. While high scores may provide external validation, what matters most is igniting enduring cultural change within your teams. Continuous improvement, not conformance to fixed standards, is the essence of true agility.