From reactive to strategic: The role of collaborative tools in IT maturity

The average work week of an IT leader can be described in one word. Overwhelming. Waves of urgent tickets challenge even the most rigorous prioritization model, emergency meetings chew up focus time, and strategic planning sessions get cancelled for other priorities. It’s no wonder then that most IT departments find themselves constantly reacting to problems instead of building a strategy to address their root cause.

Most IT departments operate at low IT maturity levels, meaning they’re stuck in a cycle of reaction rather than proactive strategic planning. Moving up in maturity levels isn’t just about building the right processes and documenting them; it also means relying on collaborative tools that enhance the work you’re doing instead of getting in the way. These tools give you visibility into IT work, streamline communication, and allow you to document the knowledge you need to reach higher maturity levels.

In this guide, you’ll find a guide to IT maturity, IT maturity levels, and the role of collaborative tools.

What is IT maturity?

IT maturity describes an IT department’s ability to deliver IT services strategically, respond to emergencies efficiently, and align with broader business objectives. A low level of IT maturity represents an IT team that’s constantly reacting to issues, with little time to improve processes or build strategies for improving its services. A high level of IT maturity represents an IT team with a defined strategy, alignment with other departments, and resilient processes for everything from reacting to emergencies to escalating high-priority tickets.

Typically, IT maturity is measured along five levels.

Level 1: Initial

At this level, IT teams use ad-hoc processes that are rarely documented thoroughly. IT is more about fighting fires than serving the needs of different functions, and individual contributors are often overwhelmed with tickets.

Level 2: Repeatable

IT teams reach this maturity level when they first start documenting processes, though this typically only applies to basic processes. Some consistency begins to emerge as documentation makes these processes more repeatable.

Level 3: Defined

At this stage, IT teams become more proactive about defining processes, establishing an IT strategy, and planning for the IT needs of various departments. Processes become standardized beyond just basic processes, making IT services more reliable.
 

Level 4: Managed

This level goes beyond merely defining and standardizing processes. IT teams reaching this level of maturity implement metrics-based management in their work, allowing IT leaders to make more data-driven decisions and predict potential trends in IT needs throughout the organization.

Level 5: Optimized

At level five, IT teams aren’t just using data to make better decisions and track their performance. Data and metrics become a foundational element of a culture of continuous improvement. Every process, every intervention, every emergency is a learning opportunity. Additionally, the IT department becomes more than just a service-based business function that fixes problems and puts out fires. IT becomes a strategic partner for other leaders, with their perspectives becoming essential to broader business strategy.

Most IT departments stay at level one or two, putting out fires and making small efforts to improve and document processes, but never quite reaching a place where processes are clearly defined. IT departments at higher maturity levels have a great impact on the business at large, rather than just reactively handling IT requests. Better yet, they enjoy more trust from the employees who rely on them.

The collaboration gap: Why IT teams are stuck in reactive mode

Working with IT is no different than working with any other department; it relies on tight collaboration and clear communication. That means IT teams run into the same sort of collaboration issues other teams do, but they’re particularly pernicious in IT. Here’s why.

Information silos

Information silos happen when essential knowledge is trapped in someone’s head or scattered across multiple software systems. On a small IT team, this can lead to individual members being the go-to person for specific processes or problems. If that person is ever out sick or leaves the organization, all the knowledge they had goes with them.

IT teams at lower maturity levels rarely have centralized documentation or a knowledge base to house essential information, meaning even documented processes may be scattered across different platforms or inconsistently documented. These silos make everything from escalating tickets to communicating with other departments unnecessarily challenging.
 

Limited visibility

Too many IT teams have just one or two channels of communication with the departments they work with: support tickets and email chains. That gives IT professionals little visibility into the day-to-day work of other departments, meaning their processes aren’t well adapted to that reality. But it’s IT leaders who actually struggle the most with this lack of visibility.

IT tickets are often found in isolated systems that are hard to access and standardize, meaning leaders can’t easily identify the patterns they need to improve processes or build a stronger IT strategy. With data-driven decisions being such an essential part of moving up in IT maturity, the nature of these isolated systems can keep IT teams from maturing.

Communication fragmentation

Communication is essential to every process, and IT is no different. But because IT work often has an element of urgency to it, there’s an increased pressure on communication channels to work perfectly. Because IT teams at lower levels of IT maturity don’t have repeatable, scalable processes, they communicate in whatever way makes the most sense at the time, both within the department and without. That makes it difficult to follow up on tough tickets or align on a response plan.

Any collaboration between IT and other departments is affected by this as meetings and last-minute interruptions become the best way to get someone’s attention. But even within the team, status updates consume a significant amount of time as IT tries to stay aligned.
 

Inconsistent processes

IT issues and emergencies are naturally difficult to standardize because even the simplest issues can be caused by a variety of factors that have to be tested for. Additionally, the sheer volume of IT tickets often make standardization and documentation a secondary priority. Over time, knowledge about processes gets locked within the boundaries of the IT team, usually with individual team members rather than any shared knowledge base.

This makes onboarding more challenging, as new hires have to piece together essential processes from multiple variations and iterations. Similarly, leaders struggle to identify and replicate these processes, which makes documenting them more challenging, preventing IT teams from maturing.

How collaborative tools accelerate IT maturity progression

Communication and collaboration issues keep IT teams artificially immature for longer. While there are many elements to these issues, having the right collaborative tools can plug a lot of these issues. Here’s how these tools can help IT teams move across maturity levels.

From initial to repeatable (Level 1 → 2): Creating visibility and structure

When making the transition from level one to level two, collaborative tools help you achieve the following:

• Centralizing work: Unified platforms, like project management tools and support ticket systems, replace email chains and spreadsheets, increasing visibility for leaders and naturally documenting important processes.
• Basic workflow automation: Collaborative tools typically have some level of workflow automation, which allows you to eliminate repetitive administrative work. This frees up time for documenting processes and other tasks that can move your team towards level two.
• Shared knowledge bases: Many collaborative tools have built-in features for documenting processes, serving as a resource for knowledge that would otherwise be trapped in someone’s head.
• Basic data: Even if you don’t use a tool specifically for IT, you’ll get access to basic data that can help you identify and track the metrics you need to uncover issues in your processes.

From repeatable to defined (Level 2 → 3): Standardizing and scaling

At this stage, IT teams move from basic documentation and somewhat repeatable processes to clearly defined workflows as they scale. Here’s how collaborative tools help:

• Process templates: Once you’ve started documenting your processes, you can look at ways to improve them. Collaborative tools typically have built-in templates for standardizing everything from individual tickets to emergency response plans.
• Cross-team coordination: As tool adoption increases, the IT team can loop other teams into the tools they’re using, creating a centralized location for working across departments.
• Integrated communication: Collaborative tools allow contextual conversations to happen within tickets and other work items rather than in status meetings and email chains.
• Knowledge management: Documentation and knowledge-sharing go beyond a simple knowledge base, with advanced search and AI-powered suggestions improving access to that knowledge.
   

From defined to managed (Level 3 →4): Enabling data-driven decisions

With processes standardized and your team’s work scaling, you now need the right tools for making better decisions and tracking the impact of your strategy:

• Metrics and dashboards: With the right collaborative tool, data literacy increases across the IT team, and leaders can use built-in analytics to reveal team velocity, bottlenecks, and capacity.
• Trend analysis: As your team generates more and more data from their work, trends start to emerge, which leaders can use to identify problems and improve processes.
• Resource optimization: Collaborative tools systematize and communicate each team member’s workload, enabling intelligent assignment of tickets and other tasks, as well as planning for future capacity.
• Predictive insights: Data becomes about more than just looking at the past. It becomes a tool for predicting potential trends and adjusting processes as needed.

From managed to optimized (Level 4 → 5): Fostering strategic innovation

To transition from level four to five, IT teams go beyond process and start thinking and acting strategically. Everything they do becomes a cog in the machine of making IT an essential part of the organization’s broader goals. Here’s how the right tools help with that:

• Continuous feedback loops: Collaborative tools connect IT work with other business systems, giving feedback on essential work, even when it happens across departments.
• Integration ecosystem: Moving beyond basic workflow automation, collaboration tools allow full integration between IT systems and other platforms, eliminating the manual work involved in staying aligned.
• AI-assisted intelligence: Advanced AI systems can recommend next steps throughout IT workflows as well as help leaders make more of the data they get.
• Strategic planning tools: With a clear roadmap in a collaborative tool, the IT team can align initiatives with business objectives, drive innovation, and identify strategic opportunities.
   

Re-tool your IT strategy

IT maturity isn’t just about methodology; it requires documentation, infrastructure, and proactive management. You need to build knowledge sharing, standardized processes, and a broader strategy into everything you do. But with collaborative tools, you can shore up your team’s weaknesses, improve the way you document your work, and collaborate more effectively across teams, guaranteeing your next move upward.