My post yesterday suggested that human development might be a useful metaphor for Business-IT Maturity. In particular, we might imagine the parallels between physical, cognitive, social and economic development. We might apply these developmental dimensions to both business maturity with information technology, and to the maturity of the IT organization. This gives us both the demand and supplysides of the system. We can then build a granular, multi-dimensional tool to help assess where an enterprise is in terms of current maturity, stated ambition, and trajectory, and similarly for the IT organization that supports that enterprise. Hopefully such a tool will be helpful in diagnosing a given organizational setting, chosing a maturity roadmap, and accelerating the maturity journey.

While recognizing the risks of pushing any metaphor too far, I think the human development analogy has merit for many reasons. Humansdevelop along the four dimensions quite differently - some develop physically quickly, others develop social skills quickly, while still others develop cognitive skills ahead of their peers, and so on. What happens, for example,when a human is very mature physically, but socially inept and low on cognitive reasoning ability?

Following this line of thought, in this post I want to introduce another device - archetypes. Again, I will acknowledge the risks when archetypes become stereotypes, but let’s set those aside for now. Imagine the archetype of the “gangly teenager,” all arms and legs (physical development), but uncoordinated, socially ineptand not terribly bright. Imagine the IT organizational equivalent of the “gangly teenager.” Perhaps such an organization would have mature physical networking capability, but poor business-IT strategic alignment, and low innovation capabilities. Imagine the archetype of the “child prodigy,” with high cognitive maturity relative to physical, social and economic maturity - what would the analogous IT organization look like? Would it have a capability to generate ideas and innovations, but be challenged in sustaining these opportunities due to poor IT infrastructure capabilities? Imagine the “precocious child,” socially extroverted, but lacking in physical and cognitive maturity - what would the analogous business look like?

I think there may be value in using archetypes for better understanding business-IT maturity, and will continue working down this path - I’d love to hear from you with any suggestions or ideas to help with this thinking.