Architecture Capability

Last year a smart guy name Peter Cedheim and I (with the assistance of some gamla rävar, or old foxes, such as Dennis Selin) finalized a model to evaluate the architecture capability of an organization. After a lot of work we concluded that we could vizualise an organizations maturity with regards to architecture (software or system) using six different aspects or perspectives.



We posited that maturity-wise the organization go through the following:
[undefined/ad-hoc-->initial-->project focused-->product focused].

While I still agree with myself and Peter in theory I think that some of the underlying ideas deserves to be scrutinized yet again but from a different perspective. Clearly an excercise for an "after work".

Working with "the amoeba" was very interesting (during the course of the work it came in all shapes and forms, at some point we even had two complimentary amoebas) especially since we had to think a lot about what differs a mature organization from the next. And more importantly how do we move forward? How do we improve, to what benefit and cost, and how do we prove the improvement? I'm happy to write that the model has been field-tested and proved to be a good foundation even though some rough edges still need a bit of sand-paper.


It would be interesting to hear other opinions with regards to architecture capability... do we have the wrong aspects? Have we simplified the maturity-steps to much? Is this complete nonsense?