IT Maturity
When baking a cake, we measure ingredients. And when our children are growing, we use a ruler to track their height. But concepts like IT Maturity are less easy to measure; there are no tangible units to assess, making it impossible to apply a scale or protractor. However, an intangible concept can still be evaluated, and when evaluating IT Maturity, there are several core features to consider: consistency, diligence, and awareness. Nurturing these core features ensures that your organization will successfully update and understand its tech. Furthermore, IT brings value to an organization, thus helping it grow and mature throughout.
Here are 3 core factors for evaluating your IT Maturity:
Consistency
A mature organization is consistent in its message, its goals, and its strategy. Similarly, IT Maturity relies on consistency in a company’s teaching, prioritization, and understanding of technology. All members of an organization must be on the same page, or else they’ll be actively—though accidentally—working against each other. In other words, it’s important that tech is understood and appreciated consistently throughout your company—from employee to employee and from day to day.
Of course, this doesn’t mean a mature organization is rigid and inflexible in the type of tech it uses. Since tech is constantly evolving, a company most constantly evolve as well. Thus, IT Maturity relies on adaptability as much as it relies on consistency. In other words, a mature organization is consistently able and eager to adapt to new technology.
Diligence
IT Maturity isn’t something you gain and then have forever. It’s something that an organization must work toward, both consistently and constantly. A diligent organization is one that understands the importance of IT Maturity and continuously works toward attaining it. If a concept proves particularly difficult to teach, or if new tech proves especially hard to implement, a diligent company perseveres nonetheless.
It’s important that every teammate displays this diligence; furthermore, it’s important that said diligence applies to every facet of technology. Employees must be diligent in their cybersecurity, as well as in their understanding of how to optimize technology for day-to-day tasks. Should they lack diligence in anything involving your company’s technology, then their IT Maturity isn’t up to snuff, which means your company isn’t, either.
Awareness
A mature company understands its shortcomings and actively works against them. Similarly, a mature company is knowledgeable about its strengths and utilizes them to the fullest. However, a company can’t work on improving itself without first understanding what it needs to improve, and this understanding can only come from consistent, diligent awareness.
Once a company gains awareness, it can take steps to implement further training or mitigate a potential problem. Additionally, by diagnosing a problem, the company can keep a closer eye on said problem in order to ensure it doesn’t continue. On a larger scale, awareness allows a company to understand what it knows and what it doesn’t know. Once a company has that understanding, it can take targeted steps to increase the former.
IT Maturity shows how well your company utilizes, understands, and manages technology. In our increasingly digital age, evaluating IT Maturity is important for assessing a company’s sustainability and growth potential. Additionally, valuing IT adds value to a company. While it’s impossible to put a number on IT Maturity, it’s easy to identify attributes that commonly strengthen a company’s IT posture. Through consistency, diligence, and awareness, a company’s IT Maturity grows; in turn, so does the rest of the company.
For more information about these core concepts and how they can affect your IT Maturity, read our eBook, “Consistency, Diligence, Awareness: 1Path’s Crash Course in IT Maturity.” And if you want to learn more about the stages of IT Maturity or its effect on SMBs, we have articles to help.
