Assessments follow a simple lifecycle, moving through five stages:
- Creation – the assessment scope and profile is created, the assessment is assigned to an owner, and – if appropriate – the knowledge areas within the assessment are assigned to the relevant subject matter experts. See Creating an assessment.
- Collation – the assigned knowledge area experts answer the questions, and – once they are happy that their answers are complete – mark their knowledge area as complete. See Collating assessment data.
- Completed– once all knowledge areas are completed, the assessment owner will be able to review the responses and, when they are ready, mark the assessment as complete – see Completing an assessment. The assessment owner can also mark individual knowledge areas as incomplete so that further refinements can be made. See Completion of a knowledge area.
- Planning – once approved, the assessment results can be reviewed and the Routefinder road map can be used to plan work. See Understanding the assessment results and Identifying actions based on the results.
- Action – executing the plan will result in progress being made, and maturity improving. A work-in-progress copy of the assessment can be made, and as tasks in the Routefinder plan are completed, this copy can be updated. This allows progress to be demonstrated, and also provides a pre-populated template as a starting point for the next formal assessment, returning to step 2 above. See Tracking progress between assessments for more information.
This lifecycle is cyclical, returning to a reassessment periodically, be that six monthly, annually, or sometimes over slightly longer periods.