[Initiative]:Platform Engineering Maturity Model Assessment

[corbinpa]

Name

Platform Engineering Maturity Model Assessment

Short description

This initiative aims to create an assessment which individuals and organisations can use to orient/score themselves within the CNCF Platform Maturity Model.

Responsible group

TOC

Does the initiative belong to a subproject?

No

Subproject name

No response

Primary contact

Corbin Pacheco - @Corbin Pacheco

Additional contacts

David Stenglein (@david Stenglein)
Chris Plank (@planko)
Colin Griffin (@krumware)
Stefan Daugaard Poulsen (@cyberzed)
Steven Fenton (@Steve Fenton)

Initiative description

This initiative aims to create an assessment which individuals and organisations can use to orient/score themselves within the CNCF Platform Maturity Model.

The Platforms Working Group published the Platform Maturity Model at Kubecon Chicago (2023). While many in the community have found it useful, many organisations are finding it hard to actually assess their maturity. This initiative aims to make that simpler and the model more useful to organisations.

Organisations using the assessment will be posed a number of questions sourced from the Community Group, including multiple question, yes/no and other techniques. The assessment will take all the supplied inputs and use a scoring approach to suggest roughly where the Organisation sits within the various levels for each Aspect of the model.

The assessment may also provide recommendations, based on the scoring, of suggestions on where the Organisation could further mature in each of the Aspect areas including but not limited to what CNCF projects could help them with their current goal. The assessment will aim to ensure that organizations that are taking a platform engineering approach will be successful, aiming to improve the health of their initiatives by aligning with best practices guidance.

This is part of ongoing work within the disbanded Platform Working Group that has been ongoing since May 2024 and is now aimed for completion by Kubecon Atlanta (Nov 10, 2025), having paused in recent months due to recent TOC changes.

We request the TOC provide guidance as to the correct place within the community to conduct this ongoing work. The project was initiated with the TAG App Delivery Platform Working Group by way of this issue opened Apr 23, 2024. We acknowledge the work the TOC is doing to reorganize the TAG groups and recognize the TAG App Delivery Platform Working Group no longer exists within the proposed TOC structure. We are proposing this as an initiative to clarify the scope, deliverables, and to seek placement within the community.

References:

Platform Maturity Whitepaper
Platform Maturity Maturity Model
Platform Assessment Scope Document
Platform Assessment Working Document

Deliverable(s) or exit criteria

Milestone 1:
Completed Self Assessment Questionnaire

Milestone 2:
A Method for Scoring and Analysis for Placement on the Platform Maturity Model

Milestone 3:
Usage, Feedback and further refinement by a statistically reasonable amount of organisations

Future Milestones may be required either in the scope or outside based on feedback:
A Method for providing recommendations back to the Organisation
Further iterations of the Assessment

This is part of ongoing work within the disbanded Platform Working Group that has been ongoing since May 2024 and is now aimed for completion by Kubecon Atlanta (Nov 10, 2025), having paused in recent months due to recent TOC changes.

What technology approach will be taken (simple google sheets type approach, online form etc) will be determined during the initiative.

[angellk]

Hi @corbinpa - thanks for the submission!

Could you please outline:

• technical guidance this initiative will provide projects and project maintainers within the CNCF
• if you are proposing different levels of maturity:
  • what technical items can a project work on in order to be considered mature within the CNCF maturity models?

Please review the General/Domain Technical Review questionnaire to see how the proposed Community Group can submit Initiatives that are in line with the Day 0 / Day 1 / Day 2 schema and what technical guidance can be provided to projects from a Platform Engineering perspective.

Otherwise, as is, the work items do not appear to be within scope of the TOC and TAGs. Any work may continue within a Technical Community Group -- guidance is coming soon to apply.

[corbinpa]

@angellk I'm working with the initiative group to provide a response to your inquiry. We have a standing call on Tuesday 5/20 and will get back to following that.

[leonardpahlke]

This seems to be quite close to the End user TAB? Not sure how previous maturity model assessments have been conducted but perhaps this could be a collaboration between the TAB and folks in this initative. Was there already contact?

[krumware]

We've wanted to collaborate with the end-user TAB, but I think there may have been some things holding us back under the TAG/WG structure (I don't know all of the details). While the new structures and Technical Community Group guidance are being sorted by the TOC, it would be great to chat with the TAB about this and other efforts that could leverage collaboration. Is that something you can help us work out?

[angellk]

@corbinpa closing as this doesn't appear to meet the scope for TAG work. Please resubmit an application if you answer the questions above.

Technical Community Groups are expected early July.