Introduction

Over the past 9 months I have been working with a fantastic community team to build the Microsoft 365 Maturity Model.

The team comprises of

• Emily Mancini – MVP
• Marc Anderson – MVP
• Sadie Van Buren – The creator of the original SharePoint Maturity Model
• Simon Hudson – Leeds Power Platform User Group Leader

The purpose of the Maturity Model is to enable interested parties whether that is business owners, CTOs, CIOs, consultants understand the impacts and benefits to a business by implementing Microsoft 365.

The Maturity Model tries to keep away from the technology which is tricky sometimes but by doing that it can focus on the business outcomes and keep true to its function which is a tool to help businesses drive value from Microsoft 365.

The Maturity Model divides up Microsoft 365 in to a set of business focused competencies. This allows a business to focus and read up on the areas of the Maturity Model that it is most interested in.

The Maturity Model splits up the competencies into five levels which start from the initial 100 level and build up to level 500 which is the top maturity level.

For each Maturity level the Maturity Model describes the characteristics that an organisation would generally see if it was at that level.

Examples of the competencies include:

• Communication
• Collaboration
• Management of content
• Search
• Customisation and development
• Staff and Training
• People and Communities

Whilst there is bound to be overlap between the compentencies this helps a business see where those connections are so that they can see how they relate and one drives benefit in other areas.

For example if you wanting to have a good search experience where people can find the content that they need or for the content to find them, then you need to have good management of content to ensure old content is tidied up and removed appropriately.

Assessment

These characteristics allow an organisation to measure itself and understand where it is in the maturity model.

Additionally, by looking at the next level it can understand the type of characteristics and impacts/benefits it would achieve if it became more mature.

Focus

A business by understanding the benefits and impact can then make the concious decision as to which competencies it should prioritise and focus on first to get the required outcomes. This allows a business to achieve results more quickly as they understand and can see the goals that they need to achieve by understanding that the characteristics are to achieve those goals.

There are supporting “How to Elevate” documents which try and explain the steps that should be put in place to move from one level to another. These documents are very much work in progress and we have only implemented some of the how to documents. We move that others in the community will contribute to help make them great instructions to get a business to the next level.

Getting Started

To get started, please visit the Microsoft 365 Maturity model introduction article on the Microsoft 365 Community Docs site.

Start by reading the overview, watch the videos and read a couple of the competencies so you can start understanding the value.

Get Involved

If you have thoughts, comments, suggestions then please reach out to us on GitHub and start a discussion topic.

Finally, we are staring a Microsoft 365 Practionisers group which is part of Microsoft’s PnP Sharing is Caring and will be having a monthly community call. To find out when the next one is visit the PnP | Sharing Is Caring site.

Look forward to hearing from you and please be kind