The question looks simple. To promote an idea of data management (DM) development the following questions about DM maturity are to be answered: 

  • what is the current level?
  • what is the target level?
  • what is the benchmark to other peers? 

But how practically can you answer these questions? 

In searching for the answer, I made a brief analysis of COBIT, TOGAF, and DAMA standards, which can be summarized as the following: 

These standards differ by scope of DM components: 

  • DAMA includes 11 (well known to DM professionals); 
  • TOGAF intercepts DAMA on Data & Application architecture, Security; 
  • COBIT pays attention to Information Architecture and Data management (Data Governance, Data Ownership, and Security) as part of IT processes. 
  • Some of them (TOGAF, DAMA) require maturity assessments, but only COBIT offers a generic maturity model, which is applicable to all IT processes. 

So, the preliminary conclusions are: 

  • There is no standard technique to make such an assessment depending on a company size and other factors (also to be defined); 
  • All standards are to be adjusted to each particular company needs and capabilities; 
  • You need to develop for your company DM maturity model as a part of DM standards adjustment and implementation process. 

But still, if I urgently need to draw attention of the company management to the subject, what do I do? 

Use COBIT maturity model, which proposes 6 levels: 

  1. Non-existent 
  2. Initial/ad-hoc
  3. Repeatable, but intuitive
  4. Defined process
  5. Managed and measurable
  6. Optimized
  7. * Use the main DM Governance elements, which can be applied to the rest of DAMA components; 

Make the following manual for DM Maturity assessment: