Journey management maturity is the degree to which an organization has embedded journey-based thinking into how it makes decisions, not just whether it creates maps. It measures how deeply customer journey understanding shapes prioritization, governance, and day-to-day operations across teams.
But here's the thing most maturity models get wrong: maturity isn't a company-wide score. Different teams and departments sit at different levels. Your product team might be at Level 3 while your support team is still at Level 1. That unevenness isn't failure. It's the reality of how practices spread through organizations. There is no single maturity for an entire organization. The sooner you accept that, the more useful maturity assessment becomes.
This post gives you a framework for assessing where your teams actually are and what to focus on to advance. For broader context on the practice itself, see the complete guide to customer journey management.
What journey management maturity actually measures
Journey management maturity is not the same as journey mapping maturity. A team that creates beautiful, detailed maps but never references them in planning meetings is low maturity. A team with rough maps that inform every quarterly review is higher maturity.
Mapping maturity asks: can we create good maps? Management maturity asks: do maps drive decisions?
The distinction matters because many organizations invest heavily in the mapping side (tools, workshops, templates) while underinvesting in the management side (governance, ownership, measurement, connection to delivery). The result is an organization that produces impressive artifacts but doesn't change how it operates.
Maturity measures three things:
- How deeply journey thinking is embedded in operations, not just awareness
- How consistently journey insights influence prioritization and planning
- How systematically the organization maintains, measures, and acts on journey knowledge
Why maturity is uneven (and why that's normal)
Most maturity models present a single score for the whole organization. That's misleading. In practice, maturity differs dramatically between teams and departments. The CX team might have strong governance and regular review cadences while the product team treats journey maps as reference documents they check occasionally. Marketing might not use them at all.
This unevenness reflects different levels of exposure, leadership investment, and operational context. A support team that handles customer complaints daily has natural incentive to think in journeys. A finance team doesn't. Expecting uniform maturity across an organization misunderstands how practices actually spread.
The practical implication: assess maturity per team, not as a blanket organizational score. This reframes the conversation from "where is our company?" to "where are our teams, and which ones benefit most from advancing?"
Start by identifying which teams are furthest along. They're your proof points. Then identify which teams have the most to gain from advancing. That's where your effort goes.
Five levels of journey management maturity
Level 1: Ad hoc
No formal journey practice exists. Experience improvements happen reactively, driven by customer complaints, executive requests, or whoever makes the most compelling case in a meeting. Maps may not exist at all, or they were created in a workshop months ago and haven't been touched since.
The indicator: no one on the team can point to a current, maintained journey map.
Level 2: Emerging
One or two teams have built journey maps, usually as part of a specific project. A service designer ran a workshop. A CX lead created a map for a stakeholder presentation. The maps exist, but they're treated as deliverables, not operational tools.
The indicator: maps live in folders or on shared drives, but they're not referenced in planning meetings or prioritization discussions.
Level 3: Structured
This is where mapping becomes management. A consistent approach exists with some governance: designated map owners, periodic reviews, standardized formats. Journey findings start influencing prioritization, though not always systematically. Not every decision is journey-informed, but enough are that the practice has visible impact.
The indicator: maps are reviewed at least quarterly, and at least some improvement initiatives can be traced back to journey insights.
Level 4: Integrated
Journey insights drive decisions routinely. Metrics are attached to journey stages and tracked over time. Cross-functional teams use maps as operational tools, not reference documents. Governance cadence is established, and journey work connects directly to roadmapping and planning. Prioritization uses structured frameworks informed by journey data.
The indicator: journey metrics appear in leadership dashboards alongside business metrics.
Level 5: Embedded
Journey thinking is part of how the organization operates. Not a separate practice, but an embedded lens through which decisions are evaluated by default. Multiple journeys are managed as a portfolio with clear hierarchy, ownership, and cross-journey coordination.
The indicator: new initiatives are evaluated through a journey lens before they're approved, and no one considers that unusual.
Most organizations sit somewhere between Level 2 and Level 3. The jump from mapping to management is where the real value appears, and it's where most teams stall.
Six dimensions to assess
Maturity isn't one thing. It's the combined strength of six dimensions, and they don't all advance at the same pace.
A common pattern: organizations invest in tools before building the practice to use them. Buying a journey management platform doesn't advance maturity if governance, process, and culture haven't caught up. Tools is one of six dimensions, not a shortcut past the other five.
When assessing, score each dimension independently for each team. You'll likely find that a team strong in research and evidence might be weak in measurement, or that governance is established but culture hasn't followed. These gaps tell you where to focus.
How to assess where you are
You don't need a lengthy audit. You need a working picture.
For each team that does journey work (or should), score the six dimensions on the five-level scale. Be honest. If maps exist but no one looks at them, that's Level 2 on governance regardless of how polished the maps are.
Look for patterns across the scores:
- Most teams cluster around one or two levels. That's your organizational baseline.
- The weakest dimension per team is where to focus. Advancing the lowest dimension has more impact than pushing an already-strong one further.
- Wide gaps between dimensions signal instability. A team at Level 4 on tools but Level 1 on governance has invested in capability it can't sustain.
The most common pattern we see: tools and process outpace governance and culture. Teams adopt platforms and build workflows before establishing the ownership, review cadences, and organizational habits that make the practice stick. If that sounds familiar, governance is your priority.
The goal isn't a perfect score. It's clarity on where each team is and what single thing would move them forward.
Where teams get stuck (and how to advance)
Three stalling points show up repeatedly. Recognizing which one applies helps you target the right fix.
Stuck between Level 1 and 2: "We made a map once"
The problem: mapping happened as a project. Someone ran a workshop, the team produced a map, and then moved on. The map becomes a historical artifact within months.
The fix is simpler than you think. Assign one owner per map. Put a quarterly review on the calendar. Just those two actions are enough to cross into Level 2, because they transform a one-time output into something with a pulse.
Stuck between Level 2 and 3: "We have maps but they don't drive anything"
This is the most common stalling point. Maps exist. People know about them. But nothing connects them to how the organization makes decisions.
The fix is governance. Define a review cadence. Assign ownership (not just "the CX team" but a named person per journey). Establish minimum standards for what a maintained map includes. The gap between "we map" and "we manage" is the hardest to cross, and governance is the bridge.
Most teams that stall here need 6-12 months of consistent governance practice before they reliably reach Level 3. There's no shortcut. The habit has to build.
Stuck between Level 3 and 4: "We have governance but can't scale"
The practice works for one team or a handful of journeys. But extending it across the organization feels impossible. Other teams don't see the value. Leadership isn't invested.
The fix involves three things: standardize frameworks so journey work is comparable across teams, connect metrics to journey stages so the impact is visible in numbers leadership cares about, and build portfolio-level visibility so multiple journeys can be managed together.
Executive buy-in becomes critical at this level. Quick wins from Level 2-3 build the credibility you need to make the case for broader investment.
Advancing isn't about jumping levels. It's about strengthening the weakest dimension at your current level before trying to reach the next one.
Making the case for advancing maturity
If you're trying to get organizational support for advancing your journey management practice, don't present a multi-year transformation roadmap. Present the next level and what it takes to get there.
Start with evidence from your current state. If one team is further along than others, show what that team can do that others can't: faster prioritization of improvement opportunities, fewer wasted cycles on changes that don't move the needle, better cross-functional alignment on what matters most to customers.
Frame advancement in business terms:
- From Level 1 to 2: "We'll have documented journey maps that give us a shared view of customer pain points, reducing debate about priorities."
- From Level 2 to 3: "Journey insights will inform our quarterly planning, connecting customer evidence to what we actually build."
- From Level 3 to 4: "Journey metrics in leadership dashboards will give us the same visibility into customer experience that we have into financial performance."
Each level should justify itself. You don't need to sell the whole staircase. Sell the next step, deliver results, and let those results make the case for the step after.
Quick wins at lower maturity levels build the credibility needed for deeper investment. A team that can show a confusing onboarding step was identified through a journey map, fixed in a sprint, and resulted in a measurable drop-off improvement has a story that resonates with leadership. Accumulate enough of those stories and advancing maturity becomes an easy case to make.
Moving forward
Journey management maturity isn't a destination. It's a direction. The goal isn't to reach Level 5 across every team. It's to be at the right level for what each team needs to accomplish, and to keep advancing where it creates the most value.
Start by understanding where your teams actually are, not where you wish they were. Pick one dimension, one team, and advance it. Build the evidence that advancing maturity produces better decisions. Then expand.
