Skip to content

ADR-014 — Unified Commerce Maturity Index (UCMI)

Status

Accepted

Context

Retail organisations need a consistent, quantitative way to measure their Unified Commerce maturity and compare it against an industry baseline. Without a standard maturity model, assessments are subjective, non-reproducible, and incomparable across organisations.

Decision

UC-BoK adopts the Unified Commerce Maturity Index (UCMI) as its standard assessment model. The UCMI is a weighted-average maturity score from 0.0 to 4.0, computed from individual capability scores against a Reference Architecture baseline. The model is defined in SPEC-014.

Maturity Scale (0–4)

Level Label Definition
0 Absent Capability does not exist
1 Ad hoc Single channel, manual, inconsistent
2 Fragmented Multi-system, partial automation, not unified
3 Integrated Cross-channel, automated, consistently applied
4 Optimised Real-time, data-driven, continuously improving

UCMI Formula

UCMI = Σ(capability_score × priority_weight) / Σ(priority_weight)

Priority weights: critical = 3×, important = 2×, standard = 1×.

Gap Identification Rules

  • critical capability below level 3 → Critical Gap
  • important capability below level 2 → Important Gap

Key Principle

The UCMI is only meaningful when computed against a specific Reference Architecture baseline (ADR-013). The same capability score can represent a gap in one vertical and a strength in another, depending on the RA priority.

Consequences

  • Assessment profiles are YAML files in catalogs/assessment-profiles/.
  • scripts/assess.py implements the UCMI scoring engine.
  • UCMI scores are RA-relative — always state the baseline (e.g. "UCMI 1.65 vs RA-003").
  • Vendor assessments (ADR-017) use the same UCMI rubric, ensuring comparability.