How we built a digital maturity framework to scale capabilities and outcomes

Digital work is a moving target. New technologies surface constantly, priorities evolve, and it’s tempting to try everything at once. But I’ve learned that chasing every trend doesn’t get you closer to a goal—it just creates noise.

In my role as Head of Digital at Asana, I’m constantly asking myself how we stay ahead of tech changes that seem to accelerate daily. To tackle this, I created a digital maturity framework that’s been critical for evaluating where we are and deciding what deserves our time and resources. It’s a way to assess where we are, pinpoint where we can have the biggest impact, and chart a path forward that the whole team can understand and rally behind.

Why a digital north start matters

In an environment where digital trends are constantly evolving, new technologies pop up weekly, and trends shift constantly it’s easy for teams to either freeze up or chase every new tool without  a coherent plan. The first approach leads to analysis paralysis. The second can result in fragmented efforts and duplicated work. Having a digital north star solves both problems by giving you a lens to evaluate opportunities against your long-term goals while staying flexible enough to incorporate valuable innovations.

It doesn’t solve every challenge, but it does answer a critical question: “Where should we focus our time and resources right now?”

Introducing the digital maturity framework

For us, that north star came in the form of a digital maturity framework, which is a way to assess where we are, pinpoint gaps that matter, and set realistic targets for improvement. 

The framework helps us:

• Test new approaches with clear success metrics

• Learn rapidly from both wins and misses

• Commit resources to scale what works

• Build the skills our team needs for future maturity levels

• Create clear learning paths aligned with our goals

Here’s how we put this framework into practice:

Step 1: Evaluate where you are

We started by honestly assessing our current capabilities, identifying specific gaps, and setting realistic improvement targets. To make this concrete, we defined five maturity levels:

• Novice

• Explorer

• Player

• Transformer 

• Disrupter 

These maturity levels help us pinpoint where we stand today, highlight the gaps that matter, and set a realistic target for where we want to be, based on our core goals, priorities, and the future state we’re working toward.

Step 2: Align around key capabilities

We structured the framework around six core dimensions: areas that matter for our digital team to evolve. These aren’t just about what the business needs, but also about how we help people build new skills and grow in their roles. The best outcomes happen when you balance both: advancing the team’s expertise while focusing on the priorities that move the business forward.

The six dimensions we focus on are:

• Advanced digital skills: Moving from ad-hoc training to a structured upskilling program with certification pathways for critical digital competencies.

• Personalization: Evolving from one-size-fits-all experiences to data-driven personalization with clear governance guidelines.

• Experimentation: Moving beyond a culture of gut-based decisions to one of hypothesis-driven testing.

• AI‑powered automation: Advancing from manual workflows to smart processes that free our teams to focus on high-value work.

• Analytics and insights: Progressing from disconnected reporting to unified insights that drive strategic decision-making.

• Platform performance: Moving past rigid systems to flexible architectures that enable rapid innovation.

Step 3: Bring capabilities and assessments together

Once we assessed where we stand and identified the key capabilities we wanted to build, we brought them together. This meant mapping where our team falls across each maturity level, understanding the milestones that define those levels, and pinpointing where we wanted to go next.

For example, a “Digital Novice” in AI‑powered automation might have less than ten percent of processes automated, whereas a “Digital Disrupter” would have more than seventy‑five percent automated. By defining concrete milestones and metrics for every capability, you make it easy to assess where the team is today, what it means to move from “Novice” to “Player” or “Disrupter,” and where to invest next.

For us, this surfaced actionable priorities. We realized we're a “Digital Explorer” in personalization, relying primarily on basic segmentation based on broad segments, but we need to evolve to a "Digital Player” level with unified customer profiles and cross‑channel personalization. By making these gaps visible, we gave the team a clear path to close them.

Bringing people along for the journey

For a digital maturity effort to work, it can’t just be a top‑down directive. Early in the process, I brought the team into the conversation, first to review a draft of the framework, and then to help refine it. The result is a roadmap that reflects both their expertise and their priorities.

That collaborative approach has made a big difference. It means the team doesn’t just understand where we’re going; they have a role in shaping it. It also provides a common lens for prioritization, making it clearer how daily efforts fit into the bigger picture.

Just as importantly, it gives the team a concrete way to measure their own growth. This isn’t about saying, “go learn AI” or “get better at experimentation.” It’s about making skills‑building specific, actionable, and trackable. By tying proficiency to clear metrics and milestones, we’re helping people understand how their capabilities evolve and how that evolution fits into their role, their career, and the future we’re building together.

Making it actionable—and making it ours

The best frameworks don’t live in a deck. They live where work happens every day. At Asana, that means making the digital maturity framework actionable inside Asana itself. By leveraging Asana’s features to create a connected system in a way that visualizes our transformation journey, we’ve made it easy for every team member to understand where we stand, where we’re headed, and how their daily work moves us closer to our long‑term goals.

Key features we’re leveraging include:

• Goals: We've defined clear objectives for each maturity dimension, with measurable targets and due dates.

• Projects: Each goal is supported by specific projects and tasks that break down the objectives into the concrete steps needed to accomplish them, making it easy for every team member to understand how their daily work connects to long‑term growth.

• Project status updates: We review and update status monthly, providing a regular pulse check on progress. These status updates help the team stay aligned, surface wins, and quickly spot areas that need attention, making it easy to adjust priorities before setbacks occur.

• Custom fields: We track maturity levels, business impact, and resource requirements using custom fields that enable rich filtering and reporting.

• Reporting dashboards: Our leadership team uses dashboards to monitor progress across initiatives, identify blockers, and make informed resource allocation decisions. We can track where we’re making the biggest leaps, like deploying AI‑powered assistants or aligning on personalization metrics, and spot where we’re stalled.

What I love about this approach is how it connects strategic vision to day-to-day execution. Our team members can see how their individual tasks directly contribute to our maturity advancement. Progress becomes visible and celebrated, while potential issues can be identified and addressed before they derail our momentum.

What success looks like

Today, this approach is already yielding results:

• We’re set to progress from "Digital Explorer" to “Digital Player” across key dimensions, and in some areas, we’re setting sights on “Digital Transformer” status within this fiscal year.

• The team has embraced role‑based AI certifications, with 100% of the team workflow specialist, AI Studio foundations, and AI skill badge certified.

• We’ve deployed five AI‑powered assistants, and have increased our target to 15 as we build momentum.

• The team has a clearer understanding of where to focus their efforts, how to balance day‑to‑day priorities with long‑term skill building, and where their contributions fit into the bigger picture.

Lessons for other digital leaders

If you’re building a digital maturity roadmap for your team, a few lessons stand out:

• Bring people in early: Co‑create the framework so it reflects both your strategy and your team’s lived experience.

• Make it actionable: Put your framework where work already happens: in the tools and platforms your team uses every day.

• Track and measure progress openly: Make progress visible, so the team can rally around wins and spot areas where more focus is needed.

• Stay flexible: Targets evolve as you learn more about what’s possible. The goal is progress, not perfection.

Building the digital future together

Digital transformation is never just about technology. It’s about aligning people, processes, and tools to a shared vision. At Asana, our digital maturity framework has become more than a roadmap. It’s a way for the team to understand where we stand, where we’re headed, and how every person can help us get there.

By making the framework actionable in Asana, we’ve turned a big, abstract initiative into a collaborative, concrete practice. And that, more than any individual tool or trend, is how we stay focused and stay ahead.