An in-depth look at organizational research maturity

For the last two months, we’ve been digging in to what research maturity consists of in organizations. Research maturity is often discussed in the context of UX or Design Research teams themselves, but we wanted to take a step back and look at what it means for an organization, rather than a team, to build research maturity. As part of that, we spoke to people in a wide range of organizations and roles to understand what “research maturity” looks like in practice.

(A quick note about terminology and scope: this looks at research maturity in the context of conducting research within companies, rather than agencies or consultancies. I will also be using “research” as shorthand for the umbrella of different names (UX Research, Design Research, Product Research, Insights, etc) because of the proliferation of different terms across different organizations)

First and foremost, research maturity is really two things: impact on decision-making, and the infrastructure for conducting research in a scalable, repeatable way. Impact on decision-making is about how and when research is used in the organization to inform direction. Infrastructure can be thought of as how easy it is for someone with no organizational context or knowledge to conduct research within the organization.

Second, it quickly became clear that research maturity doesn’t require a dedicated research team. It’s possible, although significantly more challenging, for organizations without a dedicated UX or Design Research practice to build research maturity. We spoke with multiple organizations that didn’t have dedicated researchers that had managed to achieve a high degree of research maturity by investing in infrastructure and developing a culture of incorporating research into product decisions. These organizations still face considerable hurdles around reaching full maturity when it comes to research impact, but for organizations that are lacking buy-in for a dedicated research function, it’s helpful to have some examples of what investing in research looks like without dedicated researchers, and how those organizations can build a mature research culture.

The basics

There are two factors to consider in organizational research maturity: impact and infrastructure. Impact is the measure of where and how research informs decision making in the organization. Infrastructure is the underlying processes and workflows that have been created and put into practice to support and streamline conducting research, in a way that is replicable and scalable. Organizations generally start from one or the other, either by conducting research using scrappy, ad hoc processes to maximize for impact, or by investing up front in infrastructure in order to lay the groundwork for impactful research findings.

The starting point for each organization depends largely on the organization’s relationship to infrastructure and operations more generally, not just as they relate to research. In organizations that view operations as a way to streamline and improve workflows, it’s possible to get buy-in for initial investments in research infrastructure as a way to ultimately increase the speed and efficiency of conducting research. In organizations that don’t have established norms around operations, it’s most common to start by focusing on doing research that has immediate impact, using ad hoc processes.

There’s no “correct” place to start when it comes to building organizational research maturity. The most important factor in being able to continue progressing towards greater organizational research maturity is understanding the organization’s existing norms and expectations around how decisions get made and how and when to invest in operations and infrastructure.

Understanding organizational norms

Let’s take a quick look at how to assess organizational norms before embarking on your larger project of building organizational research maturity.

Review your organization and its structure. Are there already roles dedicated to operations, even if they aren’t Research Operations? Does your organization have Technical Project Managers, Design Operations roles, or other functions that are specifically meant to develop and improve processes and efficiency?
Look at how decision-making currently happens. What data sources and information are regularly incorporated? What happens when someone tries to bring in new information that doesn’t agree with what people previously wanted to do or what they already believe? What happens when the team feels like it doesn’t have sufficient information to make a decision?
Talk to people! Ask them about their experience trying to advocate for process improvements or other ways of streamlining work. Ask them what information they use to make decisions in the course of their work, and how and where they get it.

The last thing to note is that organizational research maturity isn’t as simple as following a linear progression or moving up the steps of a ladder. There are twelve key components of research maturity, and each one is a spectrum, rather than a binary. Organizations can work on any number of these at a time, and it’s possible to be fully mature in any one component while still having room to improve in the others. We’ll get into those components and how to make progress on each one, but let’s start by looking at what impact and infrastructure maturity look like.

Impact

The ultimate goal of all research is to enable organizations to make informed decisions at every level. Organizations that are at the high end of research maturity when it comes to impact have reached a point where research is incorporated into decision making throughout the entire organization. These organizations include research in the scoping and planning processes from the product feature level all the way through the company strategy level. They have frameworks in place for determining what information they need and how to get it, and they are willing to pause work in order to gather more information through research if their existing knowledge base isn’t sufficient.

Hallmarks of impact maturity:

Research is integrated into decision-making at every level of the organization
People at all levels reference relevant research in the course of their regular work
When the organization doesn’t have the required information to make a decision, the norm is to delay the decision until research can be conducted
Research is sought after when crafting a point of view on key topics

Infrastructure

To reach its full potential, an organization’s research practices need to be replicable, scalable, and streamlined. That means processes have been clearly defined and documented, and tested and refined as the organization’s needs change. Anything that can be automated or otherwise streamlined has been, and it’s easy for new members of the organization to learn and follow best practices for conducting research in the organization. Research findings and other artifacts are communicated to the organization as they’re produced, and are easy to find and retrieve months and years down the line.

Hallmarks of infrastructure maturity:

Research processes are standardized and ad hoc approaches have given way to a set of documented best practices
Kicking off a new research project requires a minimum of effort
Anyone conducting research understands and applies best practices to each step of the work
The organization has replicable, standardized ways of communicating, distributing, and archiving research findings
Onboarding new members of the organization to conducting research happens in the same way every time because the required documentation and processes for it already exist
It’s more efficient to retrieve and review existing research on a given topic than it is to conduct new research on it

Key components of research maturity

Within the larger realm of research maturity, there are twelve distinct components that go into creating a mature research organization. Each has at least one visible indicator of when an organization has progressed to full maturity in that specific area. It’s also important to note that each of these is a spectrum, not a binary, and that organizations can move in both directions on that spectrum as they grow and shift.

The twelve components are: