Developing a prescriptive IT architecture maturity model (ITA-MM)

The rise of new digital technologies allows organisations to radically change and improve their business model. This transformation is often referred to as Digital Transformation. However, organisations are often unaware of the current state of their business activities, applications, technologies and, especially, IT architecture. As a result, organisations find it hard to determine where and how to start with Digital Transformation and search for guidance in, among others, maturity models. However, current maturity models are often too general in their coverage, descriptive, complex, time-consuming, expensive, focused on manufacturing companies, and not scientifically developed. This research developed a clear and concise IT architecture maturity model (ITA-MM) with a business-process point of view, that offers a prescriptive approach for organisations during their Digital Transformation journey. The validation and evaluation of the ITA-MM show promising results, as the participants, who are also the intended users, gave the ITA-MM high scores to all the evaluation criteria. The ITA-MM helps them to gain knowledge on how to approach and execute improvement projects as part of their Digital Transformation journey. Furthermore, the ITA-MM helped the participants to document important decisions, which can be easily shared with stakeholders and used as a reference. Finally, the maturity assessment helped the participants to better understand the current situation and identify clear improvement opportunities.