All month long we’ve been talking about how to Level Up Your Identity Program, because of the similarities we’ve seen between the concept of Role-Playing Games (RPGs) and the role-based focus on access and authorization that are central to the concepts of Identity practices for organizations in every industry.

Today, we’re going to look closer at our tagline to break down exactly what it means. Is “Level Up Your Identity Program” just a forced metaphor to allow us to geek out about RPGs? While we are daydreaming about booting up Skyrim to finish just one more side quest before we finally move forward with the main quest, the answer is actually NO.

In order to help you transform into a world-class IAM organization, the experts at Fishtech Group will guide you through the five levels of the Capability Maturity Model. No matter where you are at currently, we want to help you level up through five established levels of capability maturity.

So, now that the main quest is set, let’s take a look at what each of those levels looks like.

The Levels of the Capability Maturity Model

Level 1 – Initial

This is the beginning of the quest, and as such, there aren’t many established processes. Some may define this level as ‘chaotic’. The notable characteristics of this level are undocumented processes, and success that is found through individual efforts on an ad hoc basis, due to a lack of definition of the processes at an organizational level.

What to do next: Start with the basics – review your current assets, define your goals, create an action plan to achieve them, document the entire process.

Level 2 – Repeatable

As processes begin to take shape, success becomes repeatable through basic documentation. Even so, there is a lack of process standardization and definition through the organization at this level.

What to do next: Revisit your objectives, identify your pain points, and seek expertise to overcome these early challenges to your goals. What’s working and not should become readily apparent in the early stages.

Level 3 – Defined

Processes and procedures become more refined and documentation becomes more robust. IAM processes have been defined as standard business practice.

What to do next: Develop success criteria for each area of the program and continue to monitor and document its development. Specific use cases (process objectives) can be developed for your growing practice and tools can be optimized to meet your requirements. 

Level 4 – Managed (Capable)

When an organization reaches the managed level, they will be able to monitor the achievement of process objectives through data collection and analysis. At this level, organizations can show that process objectives are still achieved under a variety of circumstances without quality loss, even during times of stress.

What to do next: Differentiate between defined processes and undefined or unsuccessful ones. Incident / Problem / Operations Management plans should be clear and teams clearly understanding their roles within the environment.

Level 5 – Optimizing (Efficient)

At this level, organizations have established success through defined processes and are now concerned with improving overall performance on a continual basis. Organizations should still be completing established objectives as they are optimizing their processes.

Level Up Your Identity Program

No matter where your IAM processes register on the Capability Maturity Model, we want to help you Level Up! We take a consultative approach to identify gaps and introduce next-generation solutions that help your organization minimize risk, maintain compliance, and increase efficiency.

Identity programs that deliver speed-to-value are rare, and organizations that can facilitate them even more so. A tightly integrated, optimized, and mature identity tech stack built from clearly defined policies and governance practices will provide a solid, reliable identity platform.

If you would like to know how our IAM experts can help you Level Up Your Identity Program, let us know by filling out the form below.