Thinking in Terms of Design Decisions When Developing Maturity Models

To measure dedicated aspects of “maturity”, a range of maturity models have been developed in the field of information systems by practitioners and academics over the past years. Despite its broad proliferation, the concept has not escaped criticism. Unnecessary bureaucracy, poor theoretical foundation, and the impression of a falsified certainty to achieve success are a few examples. As there is a significant lack of knowledge on how to design theoretically sound and widely accepted maturity models, in this paper, the author opens the discussion on design decisions when developing these models. Based on analogy and informed arguments, the author synthesizes a generic but adjuvant framework that consists of five common design steps and eighteen decision parameters that help practitioners as well as researchers in the development of maturity models.