Gov/en/Portal:R&D/Innovations:Maturity Score
💡 In simple words: WikiDeal gives each marketplace a 'how ready is it?' score, like a progress bar in a game. A high score means it needs less help.
🎯 In 20 seconds (scientific summary): The Use Case Maturity Score is a composite indicator, computed per marketplace portal, from seven signals: users, satisfaction, improvement proposals, urgency, deployment, tool interconnection, and risk of decline. It intends to guide where community attention and Open Calls are most needed, transparently.
| Origin | 🟢 WikiDeal concept |
| Status | Prototype 1, In testing |
A community-run platform hosts many marketplaces at once: babysitting in one city, real estate restoration in another, each at a different stage of life. Without a shared measure of health, energy tends to flow toward the loudest portal rather than the neediest one. The Maturity Score aims to give users and coordinators a common, public dashboard reading, so support goes where it genuinely helps.
The need: knowing where help is needed
Imagine Nadia, an active member of a young babysitting portal, and a well-established housing portal in the same region. Both could ask for improvement resources. A public maturity reading would help the community see that Nadia's portal, with fewer users and tools still missing, deserves more active support right now, without anyone having to argue or blame.
How it is intended to work
The score is computed per marketplace portal from seven indicators: number of users, satisfaction, improvement proposals, urgency, deployment, tool interconnection, and risk of usage decline. A higher maturity score signals a healthier, more self-sustaining portal that needs fewer Open Calls to keep improving. Lower-maturity portals would receive more active support. The precise indicator weighting and calculation are being documented progressively as the platform evolves.
Who does what
- Portal members contribute the raw signals simply by using and rating the portal.
- Coordinators read the score to prioritize Open Calls and support.
- The wider community can inspect any score, since the indicators are meant to be public: transparency by design rather than by request.
Why it matters for the ecosystem
A public, comparable score supports citizen participation (anyone can see and discuss where help should go), flexibility (portals evolve at their own pace without a one-size-fits-all rule), and transparency (no hidden ranking). It also frames struggling portals as a normal stage of growth rather than as someone's failure.
State of the art
Scoring the maturity of a use case adapts a long line of maturity and readiness models from software engineering, technology management and innovation research.
- Mark C. Paulk, Bill Curtis, Mary Beth Chrissis and Charles V. Weber (1993), Capability Maturity Model, Version 1.1, IEEE Software, 10(4): doi:10.1109/52.219617 · Capability Maturity Model on Wikipedia.
- John C. Mankins (1995), Technology Readiness Levels: A White Paper, NASA: official NASA page · technology readiness level on Wikipedia.
- Eric Ries (2011), The Lean Startup, Crown Business: book page on Wikipedia.
- Steve Blank (2013), Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything, Harvard Business Review, 91(5): article page.
- Everett M. Rogers (2003, first edition 1962), Diffusion of Innovations, Free Press: book and theory on Wikipedia.
See also: All innovations · R&D Portal