Slimgim Basics: Assessing geospatial maturity factors
Learn how to measure maturity objectively & consistently for each factor (like your peers and like a boss).
In this How To, we’ll start by reviewing:
- What Slimgim is
- Who should lead your assessment
- What the 5 stages of maturity are
You will then learn how to assess maturity the Slimgim way which considers the three hows:
- How consistently a factor is practiced
- How well a factor is employed
- How broadly a factor is adopted
Let’s review
What is Slimgim?
Slim = practical / pragmatic
gim = geographic information management
Many recognize Slimgim as the most practical and relevant model for measuring the health of enterprise geospatial programs. Although the maturity model is the heart and soul of Slimgim, it was first developed as a complete Geospatial Enterprise Architecture (GEA) and Health framework. Slimgim (2014) had 8 steps and several tools including workflow modeling, a Geo-RACI, error assessment and executive reporting. It was designed for the busy geospatial professional.
The maturity model is peer driven, improving and supported. It is free licensed creative commons. No sales pitch. No glossy souvenir (but I send out cool laptop stickers. Send me your address to receive some).
Measures of maturity are used to assess where your organization fits within an accepted model. It ‘disambiguates’ what this ‘enterprise’ thing is by providing an accurate picture of what ‘enterprise’ looks like.
A good model will also outline how your organization should behave and the steps required to in order to reach and sustain the enterprise level of maturity.
Since its release in 2014, Slimgim has evolved into a methodology for developing, measuring and continually improving your geospatial strategy. It is being used by your peers to road map and guide how they will transform their organizations with location data.
That’s not why you’re here today, is it?
You simply need to get started on applying the Slimgim way of assessing maturity.
“When measuring maturity, there is a right way and it requires practice.”
Tip: It’s not that hard if you practice.
After you’ve measured a few factors, you’ll get the hang of it. It helps to do it out loud and with your GIS leads. If you want guidance, contact me and I’ll help.
Who should lead your Slimgim assessment?
To begin, here’s the ‘who should NOT’ list:
- The new hire that has no experience trying to drive change in your specific organization.
- Not you (unguided) if you lack the experience, years and knowledge of the stack required to architect and drive your geospatial program. See this article — a wake up call for GIS managers.
- A committee or survey to the masses: Do not distribute Slimgim to the business units or a an entire team of geospatial team members. They aren’t qualified to interpret the questions. The answers will be too varied to be usable. I’ve seen this on a number of occasions and it’s messy.
- Job title chasers and individuals driven by self-interest.
So this leads us to the ‘who should’ list:
- An experienced pragmatist and realist who commits to the enterprise, front lines and customer.
- Stacked Geospatial managers that know the IT and business side of Enterprise GIS. Intimate with the politics of change within the organization and can architect an enterprise system as comfortably as they can architect/orchestrate change.
- Less experienced GIS managers IF assisted by a Slimgim guide.
- The newly hired experienced GIS manager that has let enough time pass to understand the internal politics and organization’s appetite for change.
Five levels of maturity
The 5 levels are described differently depending on what model you review. Common schemes include:
1-Initial; 2-Managed; 3-Defined; 4-Quantitatively Managed; 5-Optimizing
1-Ad Hoc; 2-Department; 3-Corporate; 4-Enterprise; 5-Optimized
1-Initial; 2-Under Development; 3-Defined; 4-Managed; 5-Optimizing
1-Enthusiasts; 2-Department; 3-Centralized; 4-Integrated; 5-Enterprise
The Slimgim levels of maturity
The 5 levels are presented on tab A. Getting Started of the Google sheet and excel workbook:
- Ad Hoc
- Planned/Early Stage
- Partially implemented
- Enterprise
- Optimized
Slimgim does not prevent you from adopting another scheme. In fact, you really should be taking into consideration other dimensions when assessing maturity.
Let’s get started.
Assess maturity the Slimgim way
To walk you through an assessment, we’ll work with factor 2.1 common to both the base model and Slimgim-T:
2.1 Business units have active EGIS participation
There is active participation and involvement of business units in EGIS activities, implementation, planning, etc.
When assessing this factor, you would take the following under consideration:
How consistently?
- For those business units that actually do participate, how consistently?
- Do they miss meetings often, delay emails, etc?
How well?
- When the business units participate, are they fully engaged and productive?
- Consider the “quality” of their participation.
How broadly?
- Is it just 10–20% of the business units that participate or are key stakeholders absent?
- Is it just one department (yours)? Consider if it’s truly corporate-wide or not?
- To help estimate breadth, you can also adopt this scheme: 1-individual or none; 2 -departmental; 3-corporately but not consistently; 4 -corporately and consistently; 5 -corporately and optimized.
Tip: What does enterprise look like?
For factor 2.1, if business unit cooperation is corporate wide, well managed, active, long established and institutionalized then chances are you’ll score at a Level 4 Enterprise.
How would you score factor 2.1 for the following scenario?
Scenario:
Through engagement and collaboration, you’ve established a handful of data working groups and a schedule of regular collaborations. Managers were on board during initial discussion.
Unfortunately, you could kick-off only 1 of the 4 groups (business unit managers enthusiasm waned the second initial discussions concluded). At the very first or just prior to the kick-off meeting on March 1st of this year, 3 of the 4 the working groups claimed they were too busy to participate. Their recommendation? “Let’s just start this early next year. ‘Trust us’. We’re fully on board, we just can’t free up our people for this at the moment. You understand, right?”. Ya. Right.
The one committed group consisted of employees that were already working together on a data centralization project. The working group was established to try to include key management who indicated they wished to participate, learn and were there to help expedite decisions.
Below is how Paul would review and assess this factor.
How consistently?
The existing employees that worked together before, simply continued participating at the same level effort (this is a good thing).
Management came to the first meeting then promptly stopped attending. Funny thing was, they continued to report to upper management that things were progressing well.
Note: Leave a comment below if this behavior is affecting your efforts. Our peers need to know they aren’t alone.
How consistently: 2 Planned/Early stage
- Most participants bailed.
- The single participating working group is inconsistent.
How well?
The existing employees are committed. They’re doing well (as always) but the intent of the working groups was to help streamline decisions so their ability to work at speed is severely impacted by management’s lack of involvement.
How well: 3 Partially implemented
Having working groups is a sign of a maturity. The ‘enterprise intent’ is there considering it was designed as a corporate-wide initiative. It just isn’t being managed properly (yet).
How broadly?
Easy to estimate. Only one of the three working groups made it off the ground… partially.
How broadly: 1.5 Planned/Early stage (actually, between Level 1 & Level 2)
Factor 2.1 maturity score
2.1 Business units have active EGIS participation
There is active participation and involvement of business units in EGIS activities, implementation, planning, etc.
After reviewing how consistent, how well and how broadly the organization has fostered active business unit participation in Enterprise GIS, you would rate the factor at Level 2 — Planned / Early Stage.
… repeat the process for each factor.
In the next Slimgim Basics how to entry, I’ll explain the process for estimating Likelihood. This dimension is unique to our process and is the secret sauce for understanding the organization’s appetite for change. As important, this measure will give you the data you need to create a focused road map, most likely to succeed.
“Maturity isn’t instant and it certainly isn’t easy”
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