--- name: cicd-pipeline-maturity-evaluator description: "Scores a team's CI/CD pipeline against a four-stage maturity model (Initial → Managed → Defined → Optimized) across build automation, testing, deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, and MTTR, then delivers a gap analysis and prioritized improvement roadmap. Use when assessing pipeline maturity, benchmarking DORA metrics, diagnosing slow or unreliable deployments, or building a platform engineering improvement plan." argument-hint: "[team-context] [current-metrics]" allowed-tools: ["Read"] --- # CI/CD Pipeline Maturity Evaluator ## Purpose Score a team's CI/CD pipeline against a defined maturity model, identify the specific gaps holding each dimension back, and produce a prioritized improvement roadmap tied to DORA metrics — so engineering leaders can justify platform investment and know exactly what to fix next. ## When to Use Invoke this skill when the user asks to: - Assess or score the maturity of a CI/CD pipeline - Benchmark a team against DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR) - Diagnose why deployments are slow, manual, or unreliable - Build a platform engineering improvement plan or roadmap - Justify investment in build automation, testing, or deployment tooling - Compare current-state delivery performance to Elite/High/Medium/Low benchmarks ## Inputs Required Before starting, collect: - **Team and stack context**: Team size, primary languages/frameworks, and CI/CD tooling in use (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD) - **Build automation state**: How builds are triggered, whether they're fully automated, and typical build duration - **Test coverage and gates**: Types of tests running (unit/integration/e2e), coverage %, and which tests block a merge or deploy - **Deployment frequency**: How often code reaches production (per day / week / month) - **Lead time for changes**: Time from commit to running in production - **Change failure rate**: % of deployments causing a rollback, hotfix, or incident - **MTTR**: Median time to restore service after a failed change or production incident If any DORA metric is unknown, estimate a band (Elite/High/Medium/Low) from qualitative context and flag the estimate so the user can refine it. ## Instructions ### Step 1: Establish the Maturity Model Evaluate every dimension against these four stages: - **Initial** — Manual, ad hoc, inconsistent. Success depends on individuals, not process. - **Managed** — Basic automation exists but is partial, brittle, or bypassed under pressure. - **Defined** — Automation is standardized, documented, and consistently followed across the team. - **Optimized** — Automated, self-service, measured, and continuously improved with feedback loops. ### Step 2: Score Each of the Six Dimensions For each dimension, assign a maturity stage and cite the specific evidence from the inputs. **Dimension 1 — Build Automation** - Initial: Manual builds, no CI trigger, "works on my machine" - Managed: CI runs on push but builds are slow (>15 min) or frequently red - Defined: Fast (<10 min), reliable builds on every PR with caching and parallelization - Optimized: Incremental builds, ephemeral runners, build times monitored and optimized **Dimension 2 — Test Coverage & Quality Gates** - Initial: Little or no automated testing; manual QA only - Managed: Some unit tests exist but don't block merges; coverage unknown or <40% - Defined: Unit + integration tests gate merges; coverage tracked (~60–80%); flaky tests managed - Optimized: Full test pyramid, contract/e2e tests, coverage enforced, flaky-test quarantine automated **Dimension 3 — Deployment Frequency** - Map to DORA bands: Elite (on-demand, multiple/day), High (daily–weekly), Medium (weekly–monthly), Low (less than monthly) **Dimension 4 — Lead Time for Changes** - Map to DORA bands: Elite (<1 hour), High (<1 day), Medium (1 day–1 week), Low (>1 week) **Dimension 5 — Change Failure Rate** - Map to DORA bands: Elite/High (0–15%), Medium (16–30%), Low (>30%) **Dimension 6 — MTTR** - Map to DORA bands: Elite (<1 hour), High (<1 day), Medium (1 day–1 week), Low (>1 week) ### Step 3: Calculate the Overall Maturity Score - Assign each stage a numeric value: Initial=1, Managed=2, Defined=3, Optimized=4 - Average across all six dimensions to produce an overall score and corresponding stage - Identify the **weakest dimension** (the constraint) and the **strongest dimension** (the anchor) ### Step 4: Gap Analysis For each dimension scoring below Optimized, state: - **Current stage** and the evidence - **Target stage** (recommend advancing one stage at a time — not skipping) - **The specific gap**: what's missing between current and target - **Root cause signal**: tooling gap, process gap, coverage gap, or culture gap ### Step 5: Prioritized Improvement Roadmap Rank improvement actions by leverage. Prioritize using two rules: 1. Fix the constraint first — the weakest dimension usually caps overall throughput 2. Favor changes that unblock a downstream DORA metric (e.g., faster builds reduce lead time; better tests reduce change failure rate) Produce 6–8 ranked actions. For each: - The action (concrete and tool-specific where possible) - Which dimension it advances and to what stage - Which DORA metric it improves - Effort estimate (S / M / L) and expected impact (High / Medium / Low) ### Step 6: 90-Day Sequencing Group the roadmap into three horizons: - **Days 0–30**: Quick wins and constraint fixes (highest impact / lowest effort first) - **Days 31–60**: Structural improvements requiring more setup - **Days 61–90**: Optimization and feedback-loop investments ## Output Format - **Structure**: Scorecard table → overall maturity summary → gap analysis → ranked roadmap → 90-day sequencing - **Length**: 900–1,300 words - **Format**: Maturity scorecard as a table (dimension | current stage | DORA band | target stage); gap analysis and roadmap as structured bullets; roadmap actions numbered by priority - **Sections**: Maturity Scorecard → Overall Score & Constraint → Gap Analysis (per dimension) → Prioritized Roadmap → 90-Day Sequencing - **Tone**: Platform engineering lead — analytical, evidence-based, direct about the single biggest constraint ## Quality Checklist Before delivering output, verify: - [ ] All six dimensions are scored with a named maturity stage and cited evidence - [ ] Deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, and MTTR are each mapped to a DORA band (Elite/High/Medium/Low) - [ ] Overall score is calculated numerically and the weakest dimension (constraint) is named explicitly - [ ] Gap analysis targets advancing one stage at a time — not jumping Initial to Optimized - [ ] Roadmap has 6–8 actions ranked by leverage, each tagged with effort (S/M/L) and impact - [ ] Every roadmap action names the DORA metric it improves ## Notes - The four DORA metrics move together: throughput (deployment frequency, lead time) and stability (change failure rate, MTTR) are not a trade-off at higher maturity — improving one usually improves the other - The single highest-leverage fix for most Managed-stage teams is trustworthy quality gates; without them, teams either deploy slowly (fear) or deploy often with high failure rates (recklessness) - Do not recommend skipping maturity stages — teams that jump from manual deploys to full CD without test coverage typically raise their change failure rate, not lower it - When metrics are estimated rather than measured, the first roadmap action should be instrumenting the missing metric --- ## How to use this skill This file is a Claude Code skill in [Anthropic's standard format](https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/skills) — markdown with YAML frontmatter at the top. **Installing in Claude Code:** - `~/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads in every session anywhere on your machine (recommended for skills you'll use across multiple projects) - `/.claude/skills//SKILL.md` — auto-loads only when working in that project (recommended for project-specific skills) Restart Claude Code or open a new session to register. **Using in Claude.ai, ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools:** 1. 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