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Advisory

Observability Maturity Assessment

See what your monitoring is missing.

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Monitoring analytics
Reactive → Proactive → Predictive
Overview

An observability maturity assessment is an independent, vendor-agnostic review of how well your organisation can see, understand and respond to what is happening across its systems. We look beyond tooling to the people, processes, governance and technology behind it, score you against our five-stage Observability Maturity Model, from reactive to predictive, and give you a prioritised roadmap to a more proactive, business-aligned way of operating.

Who is this for?

You'll recognise the situation

Separate monitoring tools for each technology stack, with no single view of how your services are performing.

Alerts that only fire after an incident, and alert noise that teams have learned to ignore.

Issues correlated by hand, and long times to find and fix the root cause.

No clear ownership of observability, or standards that vary from team to team.

Operational technology (OT) environments with little or no visibility alongside IT.

A need to show leadership or regulators that critical services are resilient and well governed.

Why it matters

From reactive firefighting to predictive operations

We benchmark you against a five-stage model and show the fastest path to less alert noise, faster root cause identification and fewer incidents.

5maturity stages
7dimensions scored
IT + OTone unified view
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What's included

The dimensions we score

Full Stack Monitoring Infrastructure Dashboard

Instrumentation coverage

How much of your stack is monitored, from infrastructure to full-stack and end-user coverage, across cloud, on-premises and OT.

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Data correlation

Whether metrics, logs, traces and events are unified, or correlated manually.

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Incident response

How incidents are detected, escalated and resolved, including ITIL and ITSM integration.

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Service awareness

Whether you can see services and their business impact, not just individual systems.

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Governance and standards

Naming, tagging, coverage and ownership standards, plus security, compliance and audit requirements.

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Automation and AI

The use of automation, AIOps and CI/CD integration to detect and resolve issues.

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People, process and training

Team capability, ways of working, culture and the processes that make observability stick.

What we review

Typical areas we review

Every assessment is tailored. We agree the areas to cover with you before the review starts, so it fits complex cloud, on-premises and OT environments.

How do we deliver it?

How we gather the evidence

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Executive workshops

To understand business priorities, risks and what good looks like.

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Technical workshops

With the teams who build, run and support your services.

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Documentation and process reviews

Covering runbooks, incident processes, standards and governance.

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Platform assessments

Of your current monitoring and observability tooling, whichever vendors you use.

The maturity model

The five stages of observability maturity

Our Observability Maturity Model describes five stages, from reactive monitoring to predictive, automated operations. We benchmark your current state against them and map the steps to reach your target.

1

Reactive

Monitoring by infrastructure

Siloed monitoring for each technology stack, alerts only after incidents, manual correlation of issues and no clear ownership of observability.

OutcomeLow visibility and a long mean time to resolution (MTTR).
2

Foundational

Monitoring by domain

Metrics at system or domain level, partial coverage, event consolidation and alert filtering, basic synthetic checks and limited tagging and ownership.

OutcomeLess alert noise and better awareness of system health.
3

Proactive

Monitoring by service

Service-centric views, unified metrics, logs and traces in one place, root cause analysis through service topology, defined SLIs and SLOs, and alerting integrated with ITSM tools.

OutcomeOperational consistency and faster root cause identification.
4

Optimise

Service reliability and automation

Proactive anomaly detection, governed standards for naming, tagging and coverage, AI-assisted root cause detection, automated remediation, CI/CD feedback and business-impact mapping.

OutcomeProactive detection and fewer incidents.
5

Predictive

Autonomous operations

Predictive analytics for performance and capacity, closed-loop automation and self-healing, full DevOps and SRE integration, and customer experience metrics driving operations.

OutcomePredictive operations and business-aligned resilience.
How we score

How we score your maturity

Each dimension is scored from 1 (least mature) to 5 (most mature) against a defined rubric. Your average score places you at a stage on the model and shows which dimensions are holding you back.

Dimension ReactiveFoundationalProactiveOptimisePredictive
Instrumentation coverage Minimal agents or logsPartial infrastructure coverageFull-stack coverageAutomated and standardisedDynamic and self-adjusting
Data correlation ManualEvent consolidationUnified metrics, logs and tracesAI-driven correlationPredictive correlation
Incident response Manual and reactiveTiered escalationRoot cause via topologyAutomated remediationSelf-healing systems
Service awareness NoneDomain-level viewService-level visibilityBusiness impact mappingEnd-to-end predictive awareness
Governance and standards NoneAd hoc practicesDocumented standardsOrganisation-wide governanceContinuous improvement culture
Automation and AI NoneMinimal scriptingWorkflow triggersIntegrated AIOpsAI-led decisioning

What your score means

Average score StageWhat it means
1.0 to 1.9 ReactiveMonitoring is basic and siloed. Teams are reactive, with little automation or insight.
2.0 to 2.9 FoundationalInitial observability capabilities exist but are limited to specific domains.
3.0 to 3.9 ProactiveObservability is consistent across services, with unified data and operational processes.
4.0 to 4.4 OptimiseAI-assisted analysis, automation and governance are in place.
4.5 to 5.0 PredictiveOperations are autonomous, predictive and closely aligned to business outcomes.

Not sure which stage you are at?

Talk to our observability team and we'll help you work out the right starting point.

Talk to an observability expert
What outcomes can you expect?
A clear, independent baseline: a score for each dimension and an overall stage on the five-stage model.
An agreed view of your target stage, with stakeholders aligned on where you are heading.
The specific gaps holding you back, across people, process, governance and technology.
A prioritised roadmap and sequenced work packages tied to business outcomes, so investment goes where it matters most.
A clear path to the outcomes each stage brings: less alert noise, faster root cause identification, fewer incidents, a shorter MTTR and more resilient services.

What you receive

A current-state maturity assessment and an observability maturity scorecard, with a score for each dimension.

A gap analysis against your target stage.

Platform and governance review findings.

Future-state operating model recommendations.

Process and governance uplift recommendations.

A prioritised implementation roadmap and sequenced work packages.

An executive findings report and playback session.

Training and enablement recommendations, and, where appropriate, recommendations for a Monitoring Centre of Excellence.

What's the proof?

A few examples of where an Advisory engagement has made a difference.

Bringing financial crime compliance into one governed program

Bringing financial crime compliance into one governed program

How an Australian mutual bank turned seven-plus separate reviews into one prioritised, auditable program of work in eight weeks.

Read the case study
An independent architecture review before a major build decision

An independent architecture review before a major build decision

How an asset finance provider got an honest, independent verdict on its new originations platform before committing further investment.

Read the case study
Independent testing assurance for a national clinical registry

Independent testing assurance for a national clinical registry

How a national not-for-profit healthcare association gained an independent, client-side testing function for a nationally significant platform rebuild.

Read the case study
Building an enterprise quality assurance capability for a water utility

Building an enterprise quality assurance capability for a water utility

How a state-owned water utility moved from ad hoc testing to a structured quality assurance capability it owns outright.

Read the case study
Moving a regulated medical platform from manual to automated testing

Moving a regulated medical platform from manual to automated testing

How a global medical technology company replaced manual permission testing with a maintainable automation framework its own team can run.

Read the case study
From a year of firefighting to a scalable platform in weeks: Hollard Insurance

From a year of firefighting to a scalable platform in weeks: Hollard Insurance

How a small Avocado team resolved performance issues a large vendor group couldn't — fixing latency, scaling the platform, and rolling out Dynatrace across Hollard.

Read the case study
One pane of glass: how HBF Health unified monitoring with Dynatrace

One pane of glass: how HBF Health unified monitoring with Dynatrace

How HBF Health replaced fragmented monitoring with Dynatrace and Avocado — real-time visibility across 10,000 assets and 30+ hours saved every month.

Read the case study
A $95 billion ‘Big Bang’, delivered with certainty

A $95 billion ‘Big Bang’, delivered with certainty

How Avocado led end-to-end testing and independent governance across eight streams to take a major super fund's new platform live — catching risks the vendor had missed.

Read the case study
How is this engagement structured?

Four steps, fixed scope

01

Scope and align

We agree the dimensions and areas to cover, the stakeholders to involve and the timeframe, and confirm the fixed scope.

02

Discover

Executive and technical workshops, documentation and process reviews, and platform assessments.

03

Assess

We score each dimension against the rubric, place you on the five-stage model and identify the gaps between your current and target stage.

04

Roadmap and playback

You receive the scorecard, findings and prioritised roadmap, walked through with your leadership team in a playback session.

What comes next

Many organisations use the roadmap to plan the next stage themselves. If you want support, we can help implement the recommendations, uplift your platforms, and train and support your teams through the change, using a structured change management approach so new ways of working stick.

Frequently asked questions

What is an observability maturity assessment?

It is an independent review of how well your organisation can see and understand what is happening across its applications, infrastructure and services. It benchmarks your current capability, identifies the gaps and gives you a prioritised roadmap to improve.

What are the five stages of observability maturity?

Our model describes five stages: Reactive (monitoring by infrastructure, with alerts after incidents), Foundational (monitoring by domain, with less alert noise), Proactive (monitoring by service, with unified data and faster root cause identification), Optimise (automation, governance and AI-assisted detection) and Predictive (autonomous, predictive operations aligned to business outcomes).

How is observability maturity scored?

Each dimension, such as instrumentation coverage, data correlation, incident response and governance, is scored from 1 to 5 against a defined rubric. The average score places your organisation at one of the five stages and shows where to focus first.

What is the difference between monitoring and observability?

Monitoring tells you when something is wrong, usually by tracking known metrics and thresholds. Observability goes further, bringing together logs, metrics, traces and events so teams can understand why something is happening, including problems they didn't anticipate.

Do you only assess one vendor's platform?

No. The assessment is vendor-agnostic. We look at whatever tools you use today and base our recommendations on your needs, not on a particular product.

Can the assessment cover operational technology?

Yes. We can assess visibility across OT environments alongside IT, which is especially relevant for utilities, energy and other critical infrastructure organisations.

What do we receive at the end?

You receive a maturity scorecard with a score for each dimension and your overall stage, plus a gap analysis, findings report and prioritised roadmap, presented to your leadership team in a playback session. Depending on scope, it can also include operating model, governance and training recommendations.

How long does it take?

We agree the timeframe with you before the assessment begins.

Do we have to use Avocado to implement the roadmap?

No. The roadmap is written so your own team can act on it. If you would like support, we can help, but there is no obligation.

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Deliver with certainty

Find out which stage you are at

Book an Observability Maturity Assessment and get a clear, independent roadmap to better visibility.

Book an assessment