SOA Maturity Models

Over the past week another SOA maturity model emerges. The Open Group SOA Working group released a new maturity matrix (OSIMM) for the identification of where your IT organization is on the SOA continuum.

OSIMM is positioned to be a strategic planning tool that is used to assess where you are along the SOA continuum relative to a standard, vendor-neutral maturity model, and help create a roadmap for how to move on to the higher levels of maturity. At the heart of it is the OSIMM matrix, with maturity levels as columns progressing from left to right, and the different organizational dimensions being measured as rows: business view, governance and organization, methods, applications, architecture, information, and infrastructure and management.

Within each cell of the matrix there are indicators for that dimension and maturity level: for example, if you’re using object oriented modeling methods, that indicates that your methods are at level 2, whereas using service oriented modeling would move you up to level 4 or 5 in the methods dimension. Behind this matrix, OSIMM includes a full set of maturity indicators and attributes, plus assessment questions that organizations can use to determine where they are in terms of maturity: each dimension can be (and likely will be) at a different level of maturity.

While it is stated that the OSIMM is vendor neutral, keep in mind that this was created largely from Service Integrators (SI) and vendors. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as there isn’t a conflict of interest to push/lock us into unnecessary services engagements.

The OSIMM Technical Standard at no cost and all the materials are located:

http://www.opengroup.org/bookstore/catalog/c092.htm

Other Maturity Models

OSIMM isn’t the only game in town when it comes to maturity models. Below are some others used in the industry. As you will notice, these are all provided by SI’s or vendors. While there is good concepts and ideas in these they are not compiled in an open industry forum. This is a large disadvantage to customers as it hasn’t be vetted openly.