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Comment by netfortius | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this is an either/or problem. Very simply put, the maturity and capability form a two-dimensional "grid", within which each organization fits its levels - e.g. let's say "maturity levels" on the vertical axes, and "capability controls" on the horizontal one. Where the two meet on the grid, you get the two-dimensional org level. I recently had to conduct an org maturity analysis and identified a #1 (out of 5) existing level (i.e. very immature in some capabilities, functions and their associated specific processes), then define and implement a maturity model and path for them towards achieving such, whereas their "horizontal"/capability was in a "semi-automated and developing new" level (btw 3-4).

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Doesn't this come down to tail vs. dog?

Suppose I plan to assemble infrastructure for some ideal of "Deployment Maturity" - no downtime, any time of day, one-click, etc. But it turns out the development team has designed the software to be un-load-balanceable thanks to in-memory sessions, so, thud goes my big plan. That's a very common problem.

Of course many of us see a "proper" devops discipline as interdisciplinary, so I suppose those folks would tell me to get in there, gently push devs out of the way, and fix that session mgmt problem. Of course I need advanced skills, but I also need advanced permission. Somebody's gonna fight me. Now I'm turning into more of a site reliability engineer.

So the maturity model definitely applies - especially when it comes to security - but when you're in devops-just-means-ops mode, you're much more tail than dog and it seems like you have no choice but to put capability first.

Almost as though there should be a “Capability Maturity Model.” Man, I wish someone had come up with that 40 years ago.

My only exposure was CMMI. Your comment gave me flashbacks. It made a lot of consultants a lot of money, that’s for sure. It was also a good way for federal acquisitions officials to steer contracts to preferred vendors, few of whom were able to deliver quality products on time.

./configure;make;make install ?

I wish!

https://www.cmmiinstitute.com/cmmi/intro

For a cynical (and, perhaps bitter?) laugh, how about working at an org that has a <= 0 score?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Immaturity_Model

Exactly my thoughts. I worked in a company that was CMMI 5 certified. It was a bureaucracy.

I looked up CMM bit it seems different to what is described in the article by Octopus and sounds more like just a maturity model.

Can you clarify what each of your 2 axis are? This sounds interesting

On a tangent, I once drew 2 dimensions and put all our political parties on them. It turned out the "left" and "right" were trending toward "up" and "right" not opposites. Upper right corner was totalitarian BTW.

I thought we were headed for neo-feudalism.

Totalitarianism is an implementation methodology. Actual underpinning values can vary by system.

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