Over the past 10 years or so, I developed and used an analytic maturity model that was broadly motivated by the software Capability Maturity Model (CMM) that is used in software development.
You can learn more about the model in this article: A Framework for Evaluating the Analytic Maturity of an Organization, International Journal of Information Management, 2018, which is open access and available here: doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.08.005. This article introduces five Analytic Maturity Levels (AML) and discusses the analytic processes required to achieve each level.
Over the past few years I have been working on a book called the Strategy and Practice of Analytics and have been thinking about analytic maturity levels again. Here are the five levels as defined in the book:
AML 1: Build reports. An AML 1 organization can analyze data, build reports summarizing the data, and make use of the reports to further the goals of the organization.
AML 2: Build models. An AML 2 organization can analyze data, build and validate analytic models from the data, and deploy a model.
AML 3: Repeatable analytics. An AML 3 organization follows a repeatable process for building, deploying and updating analytic models. In my experience, a repeatable process usually requires a functioning analytic governance process.
AML 4: Strategy driven repeatable analytics. An AML 4 has an analytic strategy that aligns with the corporate strategy, uses the analytic strategy for selecting which analytic opportunities to pursue, and follows a repeatable process for building, deploying and updating analytic models.
AML 5: Strategy driven enterprise analytics. An AML 5 organization uses analytics throughout the organization and analytic models in the organization are built with a common infrastructure and process whenever possible, deployed with a common infrastructure and process whenever possible, and the outputs of the analytic models integrated together as required to optimize the goals of the organization as a whole. Analytics across the enterprise are coordinated by an analytic strategy and analytic governance process.
Five ways to improve the analytic maturity level of your organization. Here are five suggestions for improving the analytic maturity level of your organization.
- Set up a committee to quantify the analytic maturity of your company. If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.
- Set up (or improve) the environment for deploying analytic models, using a model interchange format, analytic engines, or similar technology. (Helpful for AM Level 2).
- Set up your first analytic governance committee or improve the operational efficiency of your current analytic governance. (Helpful for AM Level 2).
- Set up SOPs for building and/or deploying analytic models so that the process is faster, repeatable & replicable. (AM Level 3 Requirement)
- Volunteer to lead a process to integrate two different models from two different parts of your company to improve the relevant actions. (Helpful for AM Level 5)
What’s different between AMM-12 and AMM-17? Although the paper describing the analytic maturity model was published in 2017, the work dates back to period 2010-2012. I first gave a talk about the AMM in 2012 at a Predictive Analytic World (PAW) conference that took place on June 25, 2012 in Chicago. Since the AMM didn’t change between 2012 and when it was published in 2017, let’s call this the AMM-2012 model.
In the AMM-2012, AML 1-3 are the same, but AML 4 is Enterprise Analytics and AML 5 is Strategy Driven Analytics. The problem with this approach is that strategy driven analytics can occur at any level, so it is not particularly helpful to reserve it for level 5. From one perspective whether, strategy can be integrated into processes for building reports (AML 1), for building models (AML 2), for building models in a repeatable fashion (AML 4), or for building models across the enterprise in a repeatable fashion (AML 5). With this approach, reports -> models -> repeatable models -> enterprise models would be one axis and the degree of strategy integration would be another axis. This seemed too complicated though for most applications, so for the AML-19 versions of the AMM, AML 4 is simply strategy driven repeatable analytics and AML-5 is strategy driven enterprise analytics.
I speak about analytic maturity models from time to time, most recently at the Predictive Analytics World (PAW) Conference that took place in Chicago on June 29, 2017 and The Data Science Conference Chicago (TDSC) that took place in Chicago on, April 20, 2017. I also occasionally give in house training courses that include material about helping a company increase its analytic maturity level.
You can find more information about Analytic Maturity Models in Chapter 14 of my book The Strategy and Practice of Analytics.
Copyright 2019 Robert L. Grossman