In the realm of experience research and design, achieving organizational maturity is an ongoing process of evolution and refinement. Leaders must transcend reactive, ad hoc management of their teams to embrace a systematic, data-informed approach that emphasizes responsible, strategic scale. Learn how seasoned leaders manage their organizations through the lenses of five pillars: purpose, people, practice, process, and performance. Forrester’s new report introduces the Forrester Maturity Progression Model, offering research and design leaders a management framework to guide their efforts as leaders and an accompanying assessment to evaluate their organization’s maturity.

These pillars act as the cornerstone for building a successful, impact-driven research and design organization:

  • Purpose. Defining organizational purpose is a leader’s primary mandate. Purpose is akin to an organization’s identity and should be managed with care.
  • People. People are an organization’s primary means of success. With a defined purpose in place, leaders can align expertise and skills to goals.
  • Practice. Practice enables organizations to consistently apply discipline expertise (e.g., service design, visual design, user experience research) to discovering, defining, creating, evaluating, developing, and monitoring solutions for customer, employee, and business challenges.
  • Process. Process leverages tools and collaboration to create, organize, and govern work in partnership with others.
  • Performance. Performance evaluation and communication are essential to maturity progression. Leaders who fail to benchmark, monitor, measure, and communicate impact to key audiences risk losing the support of senior leaders, peers, and partners.

For leaders at the helm of research and/or design organizations, this report is an essential resource and call to reframe your perspective on maturity from a destination to a journey of continual progression, as well as think deeply about the conditions you create for your teams, the systematic approaches you adopt, and how you measure and communicate your impact.

Let’s Connect

Read the full report for more insights and to begin your journey toward organizational maturity. If you’re a Forrester client and would like to discuss this topic further, set up a conversation with us here. You can also follow or connect with us — Senem Biyikli and AJ Joplin — on LinkedIn.