Design System Maturity Model - What does design system maturity mean?

How do you measure something as complex as design system maturity? Two teams tried to answer that question independently, and ended up in a similar, yet surprisingly different, place.

Both zeroheight's Maturity Model and Redwoods' Compass, landed on measuring maturity across six axes. While both land in similar places, we clearly approached the whole thing from slightly different angles.

In this session, we're not here to give you a 101 on maturity models. We're going to show you how these tools were actually built — the axes we chose, the questions we agonized over, the tradeoffs we made, and the places where we genuinely disagree.

We'll cover:

Why maturity isn't a checklist. Most models measure what you have, not how you work. We'll talk about why behavior-based questions produce more honest and more useful results, and why the shape of your maturity matters more than the score.

How we chose our axes. Six axes each, different names, different philosophies. We'll walk through the reasoning behind each framework and what we learned from the choices we didn't make.

Score vs. shape. zeroheight's model produces archetypes; Compass produces a radar diagram. We'll dig into why that distinction matters, and what each approach reveals that the other can't.

Where we disagree — and why that's the point. Two tools, two teams, two different hypotheses about what maturity means. The tensions between them are more useful than either framework alone.

What's next for both tools. Neither model is finished. We'll share what we're still figuring out, what the community has pushed back on, and how we're thinking about evolving them.

Whether you're trying to understand where your design system stands, make the case for investment, or just figure out what "mature" even means in your context, this session will give you a richer set of lenses to work with.