Designing and Evaluating Prescriptive Maturity Models: A Design Science-Oriented Approach

Maturity models are helpful tools to assess and improve the performance of processes, people or objects. While various guidelines supporting the design of these models exist, they mainly remain generic and lack individual guidance. Furthermore, continuous evaluation remains neglected, even though it is the basis for developing rigorous design science artefacts. Based on an existing design-oriented maturity model development procedure and a framework for continuous evaluation, this paper proposes a detailed process model for future maturity model users and developers. Following the eight steps described in this process model aims to help design prescriptive and strongly evaluated maturity models. A case study is used to illustrate the procedure by developing a maturity model for communities using telemedicine following the proposed process model.