Projects and maturity models

A project is the unit of work Scale Platform tracks: an idea, a product, a service or an internal change. Its progress is measured as a maturity score from 0 to 10, computed from the evidence the team records against the portfolio’s maturity model.

The maturity model is a grid

A maturity model is a grid of categories (rows, grouped into themes) by levels (columns, the stages of maturity). Each cell holds one objective: what “good” looks like for that category at that level, with examples of good evidence and recommended tools.

In the GROW model, for example, the categories are grouped as Value (Problem & Vision, Value Prop, Solution), Customer (Market, Sales), Capability (Team Composition, Operations, Value Chain), Finance (Financial Model, Sustainability) and Governance (Risk & Legal, Business Unit Commitment), across ten levels from Exploration Formation to Profitable & Growing.

The maturity model is the basis for the project’s Roadmap: the levels are the order the work has to happen in, and each objective is what one level asks for. The Roadmap tab shows that grid with every cell colored by its state — the route from where the project is to where it is going. Click a cell to open the objective.

How the score is computed

1. The team records evidence notes on objectives. Each note is an evaluation of that objective at that level, and moves the objective on the Planning board: Backlog, Ready for Work, In Progress, Validated or Blocked.
2. For each category, the score is the highest level that has evidence, minus one for every level with evidence whose latest note did not validate it. Validating the level-4 objective while level 2 is still in progress gives a category score of 3, not 4.
3. The project’s maturity score is the average of the category scores.

So the score rises when objectives are validated in order, and stalls when the team skips ahead without closing the levels below. That is by design: maturity means the foundations hold.

Note

Max never changes a score directly. Max proposes evidence notes and statuses; a person confirms them, and the score follows.

Where things live in a project

A project opens on Overview. The nav row under the project name carries all eight destinations, in this order:

Destination	Holds
Overview	The summary: Current maturity and its history against a Comparison period, the Forecast to next gate, business potential, latest evidence and the team.
Planning	The board of objective cards in lanes. Evidence notes are written here. See Planning.
Roadmap	The full maturity matrix, every category against every level. Open a cell to assess that objective.
Actions	Every action in the project, with a count of what is still open. See Actions and My work.
Business Case	The value case behind the project. See Business case.
Team	Who is on the project, with each member’s domain and allocation.
Files	Documents attached to the project. See Link files to a project.
Timeline	Score changes alongside evidence, files, team changes and status changes, day by day.

The Project settings button in the project header holds the fields below — not the team and not the business case, which have destinations of their own.

Project fields

Field	Notes
Status	In Concepting for ideas being explored, Active for work under way, then On Hold, Cancelled or Archived. The portfolio’s project list has a tab for each group.
Priority	High, medium or low.
Organization unit	The department or team the project belongs to.
Horizon	Horizon 1 (maintain and defend the core business), 2 (nurture emerging business) or 3 (create genuinely new business).
Project lead and team members	On the Team tab, not in Project settings: each member with a Domain and an Allocation. Team members see the project in My work and follow its updates.
Themes	Free labels for filtering across the portfolio.

Edit them under Project settings, except the team, which has its own Team tab. Bulk changes to status, priority, unit and themes, and moving projects between portfolios, are in the Actions menu of the portfolio’s project list.

Starting a project from materials

When you create a project from reports, decks or plans, Max reads them against every objective and proposes a first set of evidence notes with citations. Reviewing and accepting them gives the project its first score. Later, add files under Files and click Reassess evidence to have Max propose updates. See Max Scale.