The Guys continue their conversation when the Microphones turn on about their failed Wish.com purchases…  leads nicely into a talk about Quality and level of value…

So there are definitions of maturity for M365 which starts at 100 and moves through 5 levels 100 to 500.  

Steve works through the Differences and Definitions and the boys look to understand the people who will drive maturity…

The 25-year-old millennial who drives change because they need new tools and don’t want to work with old tools that have been around for 20 years.

Steve gets a little hissy about the value of the individual when it comes to measuring the organisation maturity…  and Marijn drops his ‘It Depends’ when considering how to drive the change forward.

The conclusion is that Chaotic theory will kick in and groups of people will drive forward their areas because of individual motivation.

Steve makes Marijn look at the maturity level and decide if he is for them or against them…  he sees that they are a great baseline.  They try to work out how to create the baseline…

Marijn makes a list of the things that you are looking to achieve with the business and Steve keeps trying to get Marijn to see that some measurement is required…  so that continual improvement can continue you need to understand the start.

Level 100 is often defined by the lack of consistency in how Microsoft 365 is used across the organisation leading to confused and frustrated users.  Islands of Expertise be a positive but as people move from island to island the experience is different

The conversation turns to looking at how this might be affected by the size of the organisation… will 5 people move to higher levels quicker than say 5000…

At Level 200 where a common understanding exists then new changes and updates can be fitted in… Level 200 means that an organisation has a set of common policies that the whole company can work towards.

Marijn points out that this enables the standards to be based on the business needs and values are…

Level 300 is the minimum target where Collaboration becomes a standard process, and the role of the consultant is to ensure that the company gest to Level 300.

Real value is obtained when you measure the maturity of the company and productivity score considering them together.  Together they provide the reference points that can drive change and Continual improvement  

At level 300 the organization will start to see real improvement in the way the organization communicates and changes.

Reaching 400 means that the Business trust the technology and the service providers.  However too much formality can reduce agility…

Maybe the move to level 400 does not work for your organization so care is needed to ensure that a formal approach with automation does not reduce the ability to develop further.

At level 500 the company is better managed with automation as standard replacing many regular functions previously manage manually or driven by manual processes

The optimization at Level 500 use as it is appropriate.

In conclusion defining the development and levels of maturity it provides a basis for management to define the level of change needed and to justify the costs that it will take and enables a value to be defined

Then it is time to go to the Ilse of Aaron on the west coast of Scotland for our whisky tasting for a whisky named after a famous stone that gets the name… ‘elegance in a bottle’ 

Marijn askes a great question of the listeners… How did we change your mind about something over the last 50 episodes?