SADMF Maturity Score

The precise numerical representation of your organization’s transformation excellence, scored on a bell curve!

The SADMF Maturity Score is the definitive measure of an organization’s commitment to the Scaled Agile DevOps Maturity Framework. It quantifies the precise execution of the SAD Delivery Lifecycle across every team, every role, and every ceremony, producing a single number that tells leadership exactly how transformed they are. Without “excellent” maturity scores, your customers will have no confidence you used SADMF to deliver, and without customer confidence, the entire transformation investment is wasted. The score is not optional – it is the reason the transformation exists.

The Maturity Score is calculated through the DevOps Process Excellence Assessment, a weekly evaluation featuring a 200-question survey covering ceremony attendance, documentation completeness, process adherence, and mandatory framework memorization. Each individual receives a raw score, which is then normalized against a bell curve distribution across the fleet. The bell curve ensures that exactly 10% of participants receive “Excellent,” 20% receive “Proficient,” 40% receive “Developing,” 20% receive “Deficient,” and 10% receive “Critical.” This distribution is enforced regardless of absolute performance – even if every person in the organization achieves perfect scores, 10% of them will still be rated “Critical.” The bell curve is not a flaw in the system. It is the system. Competition drives excellence, and excellence requires losers.

Individual maturity scores roll up into team scores, team scores roll up into fleet scores, and fleet scores roll up into the organizational SADMF Maturity Score that is presented to the Admiral’s Transformation Office. The rollup process uses a weighted average where ceremony adherence counts for 40%, documentation completeness counts for 30%, framework memorization counts for 20%, and “transformation enthusiasm” (assessed via peer survey) counts for 10%. The DevOps Usage & Compliance Head Engineer (DOUCHE) is responsible for auditing the rollup calculations and certifying the final score before it is published to stakeholders. Any team whose score falls below “Proficient” is placed on a Maturity Improvement Plan and assigned additional ceremonies.

The Maturity Score is prominently featured during Shore Leave, where it determines which teams receive recognition and which teams receive “coaching opportunities.” Teams that achieve “Excellent” ratings for three consecutive Convoys earn a Maturity Excellence Badge, which is displayed on the team dashboard and mentioned in the organization’s quarterly investor communications. The Commodore uses maturity scores to determine Convoy composition, preferring to staff critical features with high-maturity teams and assigning low-maturity teams to internal tooling or documentation tasks where their process deficiencies will cause less visible damage.

The score also serves as the primary input for the SADMF Adoption Rate metric, as only individuals who achieve at least a “Developing” maturity rating are counted as having adopted the framework. This creates a natural incentive alignment: the more people study the framework and memorize its terminology, the higher the adoption rate, which raises the maturity score, which raises the adoption rate further. This self-reinforcing cycle is what SADMF calls “transformation momentum,” and it is the clearest sign that the framework is delivering value. Organizations that question whether a self-referential scoring system constitutes genuine improvement are encouraged to review the Systems Thinking principle, which explains that all systems are self-referential when viewed at sufficient scale.

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