The maturity assessment gave you one number per capability. This worksheet is where you produce the other two, and where the heat map on your wall becomes a set of decisions someone can defend in a steering committee.
Work through it with the assessment findings open beside you. For a forty-capability map, expect the first pass to take a working session, not an afternoon of solo effort: the required numbers come from the room where the strategic choices live, and you'll need the people who made them.
Before you start: two prerequisites
1. The assessment scores. Current maturity per capability, from whatever rubric your assessment used. If you have scores per unit rather than institution-wide, better: use them. A single averaged number hides the faculty running a capability at Level 4 beside the faculty running the same capability ad hoc.
2. The strategic choices, explicit. You cannot derive a required level from a strategy that is a list of priorities. You need the choices in cascade form: where the organisation will compete (where to play) and how it intends to win (how to win). If those don't exist in writing, stop here; the worksheet will only document that they're missing. The Strategic Choice Cascade is the instrument, and Closing the Strategy-Execution Gap teaches it.
The scale you're working in
A maturity level measures how institutionalised a capability's operation is: how repeatable, instrumented, and embedded its people, process, technology, and information are. Performance evidence is what validates a maturity level claim. Deployment evidence validates nothing.
The difference matters at every row of the worksheet, so here is the same Level 3 written both ways, for one capability (early alert, within student support):
| Deployment-anchored Level 3 (reject) | Performance-anchored Level 3 (use) | |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence | Early-alert system implemented. Advisors trained. Intervention process documented. | Flagged students contacted within five days, consistently, across faculties. Interventions tracked to outcome. Retention of flagged students measured each term against a baseline. |
| What it proves | Money was spent. | The capability performs, and you'd know if it stopped. |
If your assessment's rubric reads like the left column, keep the scores as a starting point but treat every maturity level claim as unvalidated until you have right-column evidence behind it.
The Three Numbers
Every capability row you complete carries three numbers, each from a different source:
- Current: how mature the capability is today. Source: the assessment.
- Required: how mature it needs to be. Source: the strategic choices, via the walk below.
- Validated: how much of the claimed maturity is backed by performance evidence. Source: outcomes data, not project reports.
The findings live in the differences. Current below required: strategic gap. Current above required: over-investment. Claimed current above validated: the Infrastructure Trap. Current equal to required, on purpose: a deliberate two, with the choosing sentence on record.
The walk
Take the capabilities in any order; take the steps in this order.
Step 1: Strike. A reference model like HERM catalogues everything an institution could do. Your where-to-play choices select the subset you actually do. Strike the capabilities your strategy excludes, and record the striking sentence: "We don't carry [capability] because we chose not to play in [arena]."
Step 2: Floors. Mark the capabilities whose minimum maturity is set by regulators, auditors, or market-access conditions (cybersecurity, privacy, research ethics, financial reporting). The floor is not a target you derive; it arrives with the where-to-play choice. Record it. The contour is drawn above the floors, never instead of them.
Step 3: Peaks. For each how-to-win claim in the cascade, name the capability it lands on and the performance dimension it depends on. Then derive the level: what does the sector operate at (the benchmark is your ruler, not your decider), and how far above it does the claim require you to be? Complete the sentence for each peak, with a number in it: "[Capability] must reach Level [N] because we chose to win by [claim], and winning means being measurably better than a sector that operates at [N−1]." Expect a handful of peaks, not a dozen. If everything is a peak, the cascade work isn't finished.
Step 4: Plateaus. The table-stakes capabilities every peer runs. Required level: efficient and reliable, no higher. While you're here, mark duplications: the same capability run differently by different units is a consolidation decision waiting to be framed, and spreading the most mature practice is cheaper than any uplift program.
Step 5: Valleys. The deliberately loose capabilities, held low for one of two stated reasons: commodity (good enough is enough, and further investment starves the peaks) or exploratory (process weight would slow the experimentation that produces the next peak). Record which reason, plus the boundary (when an experiment becomes an operation, it graduates) and the revisit date. A valley without a choosing sentence is just neglect wearing a label.
Step 6: Source. For plateaus especially, ask: do we need to own this, or only to have it performed? If a shared service or provider can run it at the required level for less, the target moves rather than disappears: the capability you now need to be good at is managing the provider. One rule has no exceptions: a peak is never sourced out. If a vendor can supply your how-to-win, it was never a how-to-win.
Step 7: Walk the value streams. Per-capability targets are provisional until this pass. Take each value stream that carries a how-to-win claim, walk it end to end, and check every capability it crosses: a nominal plateau sitting on a strategy-carrying stream inherits requirements the per-capability walk can't see. Adjust required levels where the handoffs demand it.
Step 8: Re-sort the investment queue. Order by distance from required level, weighted by strategic importance. Not by score ascending. Expect at least one capability to move dramatically up the queue, and at least one funded uplift to lose its justification. That second finding is the worksheet paying for itself: an uplift cancelled because the capability is already sufficient is a decision nobody previously had grounds to make.
The worksheet
| Capability | Current | Required | Traces to (choice or floor) | Validated (evidence) | Gap type | Verdict | Choosing sentence on record? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employer partnership management | 2 | 4 | How-to-win: distinctive work-integrated learning | 2 (placement rates tracked) | People + information | Peak | Yes: derivation sentence |
| Timetabling | 2 | 2 | Table stakes; second pass confirmed the placement handoffs hold | 2 | None | Plateau | Yes: sufficient as-is |
| Student data integration | 2 | 3 | Raised by the second pass: carries the placement value stream | 2 | Integration | Plateau, stream-raised | Yes: step 7 note |
| Records management | 2 | 2 | No strategic claim lands here | 2 | None | Deliberate two | Yes: uplift cancelled |
| New-program incubation | 2 | 2 | Exploratory: value comes from experimentation | n/a | None | Valley | Yes: boundary + revisit date |
| Payroll | 3 | 3 | Table stakes; floor applies | 3 | None | Source candidate | Pending sourcing review |
| Clinical trials management | n/a | n/a | Where-to-play excludes clinical programs | n/a | n/a | Struck | Yes: striking sentence |
Gap type uses the Design4 classification, because the remedy differs by disease: a maturity gap (have it, not good enough), a resource gap (don't have it), or an integration gap (pieces exist, don't connect). Within a maturity gap, name the element: people, process, technology, or information. The contour says how high; the gap type says what kind of climbing.
What to do with the finished worksheet
Take it to the body that approved the roadmap. A promised uplift is a governance commitment; only the group that made it can unmake it, on your sponsor's motion. The worksheet is the evidence base for that conversation, not a substitute for it.
Give the contour an owner and a calendar slot. The required numbers change when the strategic choices change, so the walk is a standing item in the planning cycle, not a one-time exercise. An organisation that redraws the contour each cycle compounds; one that files the worksheet resets to zero.
Baseline the peaks first. Validated needs performance evidence, and gathering it for forty capabilities is a program in itself. Instrument the handful of capabilities the strategy depends on; accept coarser evidence on the plateaus.
The test of the finished worksheet is one question, asked of any row: can you produce the sentence that chose this number? If every row survives that question, you're no longer holding a heat map. You're holding a strategy, stated in capability terms.
Companion reading: Capability Maturity and the Maturity Theatre Problem. The derivation walk is taught in full in Closing the Strategy-Execution Gap; reference model fluency in Building the Common Language.