Model history

Where the ladder comes from

The SOM Institute’s maturity model, the ladder you place yourself on in the survey, was developed by SolrBoost. Its shape comes from software engineering: the Capability Maturity Model.

Where the shape comes from

The Capability Maturity Model

  1. The late 1980s

    Developed at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, from Watts Humphrey’s work. Its original purpose was to let the US Department of Defense judge how reliably a contractor could deliver software.

  2. 1991

    Published as CMM v1.0, with five levels: Initial, Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Optimizing.

  3. The early 2000s

    Succeeded by CMMI.

  4. Since then

    The staged-maturity idea has been applied in many fields.

Its lasting idea

  • Capability matures in recognisable stages.
  • A level describes how an organisation works, not how one project turned out.
  • The top level is defined by measurement and continuous improvement.

Why it fits

Why that fits solar O&M

A fleet’s output over its life depends on practices:

  • Monitoring: how faults are found.

  • Performance: how production is judged against expectation.

  • Data Quality: how far the data can be trusted.

  • Data Analysis: how deep the analysis goes.

  • Optimisation: whether settings are ever revisited.

  • Finance: whether energy becomes money.

  • Reporting: what reaches the people who decide.

The same gaps recur across fleets, and a described ladder is more useful than a score: it tells you what your next step looks like.

Kept and changed

What SolrBoost kept, and what it changed

The Capability Maturity Model has five levels, numbered 1 to 5. The SOM Institute ladder you climb has six, from 0 to 5.

Capability Maturity Model Five levels, 1 to 5
  1. 1Initial
  2. 2Repeatable
  3. 3Defined
  4. 4Managed
  5. 5Optimizing
SOM Institute maturity model Six levels, 0 to 5
  1. 0BlindAdded
  2. 1Manual
  3. 2Reactive tooling
  4. 3Systematic
  5. 4Automated & integrated
  6. 5Optimised & quantified

The dashed slot marks the step the Capability Maturity Model doesn’t have. The SOM Institute model adds it: level 0, “blind”.

Kept

From the Capability Maturity Model

  • Staged levels.
  • One plain-language description for each level.
  • The highest level defined by measurement, verification and continuous improvement.

Changed

For solar O&M

  • A level 0, “blind”, because many fleets have no monitoring at all, so the ladder starts below “manual”.
  • Seven solar-specific areas on one shared spine, so levels compare across areas.
  • Your own importance and target for each area, so your gap is measured against your own ambition.
  • Every area weighted equally.
  • The benchmark compares area by area.
  • No single score is ever shown.

How it was built

Built on experience and research

SolrBoost built the model on its own experience running monitoring and analytics for solar fleets, and on commissioned research by an independent research partner.

From model to benchmark

The Solar O&M Maturity Survey turns the model into a benchmark for the South African industry, run in partnership with the University of Cape Town, TruePoint South Africa and Partnerships for Growth (P4G). The partners receive aggregated, anonymised results only. Find your step in under ten minutes.

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