Re: Maturity model - initial read/thoughts

No. We cancelled the meeting out of respect for Judy hrumann’s memorial service taking place and streaming online right now.

This message was Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse any typographic errors.

On Mar 8, 2023, at 8:05 AM, Stacey Swinehart <stacey.swinehart@gmail.com> wrote:


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Hi everyone,

Are we meeting today?

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 10:55 AM David Fazio <dfazio@helixopp.com<mailto:dfazio@helixopp.com>> wrote:
Hello, everyone. Stacey Swinehart Ganderson will be joining us this week, and from here going forward, as our guest. Below is her review of the Maturity Model draft. Please review and be prepared to discuss on Wednesday.

From: Stacey Swinehart <stacey.swinehart@gmail.com<mailto:stacey.swinehart@gmail.com>>
Date: Friday, February 24, 2023 at 1:52 PM
To: David Fazio <dfazio@helixopp.com<mailto:dfazio@helixopp.com>>
Subject: Re: Maturity model - initial read/thoughts

It's a lot, that's why I want to stress that these don't need responses from you :)



Main questions:
How do you envision a team, company, etc. use the model?
•         When would they start using this model?
•         Where do they start/What initial steps would they take?
•         What happens if they have one person with 8 hours per week or less available to be documenting (and doing the due diligence with others that they work with to get that data)? Is this model still a feasible option for them?



Questions that came up as I was reading through each section:
•         Is the model only for SDLC/external-facing products? Or, does it encompass internal products, experiences, processes? This isn’t clear, but at first read of the introduction it seems external facing products only.
•         Integrate stage - who’s creating the roadmap? Or is this meaning it’s baked into the roadmap for various teams? Part of OKRs?
•         I feel like there’s a stage missing between Launch and Integrate based on the criteria definition. Or, perhaps launch needs a broader scope of definition. Launch in this instance might actually be a short timeframe, and how this is defined integrate might be as well. There’s a lot of planning and potentially internal research, staffing, out-sourcing, etc. that might happen to make the items in integration come into play. So integrate feels a bit light on the criteria as well. I feel like most of the heavy lifting would occur in launch and integrate but it doesn’t read that way to someone that isn’t well versed in what it take to build accessibility into their processes and culture.
•         I would expect training and education (up-skilling) to be called out somewhere in this as well as accountability. Who’s accountable? While accessibility is everyone’s job, there are definitely structures in place in organizations where performance is based on certain things…and very rarely is accessibility one of those things. So that would need to be a big lever to pull inside of a company becoming more mature.
•         Are there suggestions for how long things take? Execs love to know that even if it’s as ambiguous as “this phase will take as long as it takes, or depending on funding and resourcing and the size of your organization it can take 2-4 years” (and in some cases how broken the org is)
•         For the overarching maturity rating…how do you know when you get to each one via the dimensions? What if you have integrate for most things, but not for others? Where do you land on maturity ratings? Is it confusing if the dimension ratings are the same as the overarching rating? Trying to think about how these ladder up to the overarching one “at a glance” or for the non-expert that might be using this.
•         Do we have suggested steps in how to achieve the dimensions? Is that something that W3C would do?
•         For knowledge and skills - how do they determine what is relevant to a role or experience level? What if they don’t have an expert on staff? Where can they find insights into making some decisions on that? —> if this is listed later in the doc it would be helpful to note that this info is provided.







Observations as I was reading:
•         executives in an organization as an intended audience…I’m just getting into section 2 and it’s already too long for execs. They’ll pass this off to a person or a team. They want a TLDR on what the model IS not the definitions, dimensions, how to do it, etc. They’re going to pawn if off (sorry, delegate) to someone else.
•         can it fit onto 2 slides, and then the “now what” for next steps.
•         A company may have to do a separate assessment of their current practices before they can even start on a model/the assessment in this model.
•         Would love to see a more “how to” type of document to compliment this document. Like a toolkit for a company or a team to use. “now that you have this info, here’s how you can go use it ASAP without tons of training.” — here’s the WHY and the WHAT now here’s the HOW.
•         I know this is trying to be agnostic so it can cover a wide variety of businesses, education, government… But as I'm looking at the proof point section, I could see where something like this could be broken up into areas that match more closely to how an entity might be structured for better understanding of how it affects how they run. For example, a large corporation has an operations area. Accessible communications might fall into operational standards (or even HR, depending). There’s a lot of assumption in organizations that accessibility doesn’t reach into those operational areas in the org, and if that’s not clear how will they be set up for better success to implement these types of broad-reaching changes/needs?
•         I think it’s possible for an org to move back and forth between a stage based on how they’re prioritizing, funding and staffing the initiatives. Similar to the design phases within SDLC. Teams might go back and forth depending on new insights/data, prioritization and staffing, or even if there’s a pivot.
•         I like how there are ratings for the dimensions. I don’t think I caught that earlier in the introduction that this would be the case.
•         Looking at the spreadsheet (and I wasn’t sure on which tabs were the newest or ones I should look at) - the spaces for evidence make it seem like an easy thing to track and then list out. But it can be really weighty and time consuming. And what if one or two teams are doing amazing but others are struggling? How does that affect how you document and evaluate maturity in this model? Could be cool to have the evidence evaluation for the gaps so they know where to shore up and focus (that might be the intention here already?).
•         I can see this being very overwhelming and just documenting everything on an on-going basis could be someone’s full time job. Many companies don’t provide a program manager, product, TPM or other to assist in accessibility efforts. This may be quite hard for many to implement.
•         Looking at the first tab for spider graph, this is actually a very simple and easy way to understand experience and maturity and is commonly used in performance evaluations/discussions and competencies. I actually wonder if there’s a simple version for people without experts or for smaller businesses that will need less. Maybe there’s something in this model as a first step into how to start and build this journey?

On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 3:43 PM David Fazio <dfazio@helixopp.com<mailto:dfazio@helixopp.com>> wrote:
No worries. That’d be great
Sent from my iPhone


On Feb 24, 2023, at 10:22 PM, Stacey Swinehart <stacey.swinehart@gmail.com<mailto:stacey.swinehart@gmail.com>> wrote:

Hey there!

I dug into the model a bit so I can be ready to listen and understand for the next meeting. I have some initial thoughts and questions. None of them require a response, just more of a brain dump. Do you want me to email those to you?

Thanks!
Stacey