Across organizations, something subtle shifted. Instead of maturity assessments that gathered dust in reports, these spreadsheets became living guides. Boards asked for scenario analyses rather than static scores. Managers stopped treating maturity as a badge and started seeing it as a journey — a chain of decisions, resources, and culture changes the tool could help map.

The process is not implemented or fails to achieve its purpose.

Assessments for typically utilize Excel-based toolkits to map governance objectives to Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) levels, ranging from 0 (Incomplete) to 5 (Optimizing) . In 2021, top assessment tools prioritized integrating the COBIT Performance Management (CPM) scheme, which provides a structured method for rating 1,202 activities across 40 governance and management objectives.