Scoring Methodology

Concordance assesses software development practices across 50 evidence-based standards, organized into 6 phases of the software development lifecycle. Each standard is scored on a 1–5 maturity scale based on observable evidence from your connected tools.

The Concordance Score

Your Concordance Score is a confidence-weighted average across all 50 standards. Standards with higher confidence (more data, more reliable signals) contribute more to the overall score. This prevents low-confidence estimates from skewing your results.

// Confidence-weighted scoring
score = Σ(standard_score × confidence) / Σ(confidence)
// Where confidence ranges from 0.0 to 1.0
// based on data availability and signal strength

Maturity Levels

Each standard is scored 1–5, corresponding to a maturity level. These levels describe the sophistication and consistency of the practice, not just whether it exists.

1
Reactive
No defined process. Work happens ad hoc. Quality depends entirely on individual heroics.
2
Emerging
Some practices exist but are inconsistent. The team recognizes the need for structure but hasn't formalized it.
3
Defined
Processes are documented and followed. Standards are understood and practiced. This is the baseline for professional engineering.
4
Managed
Practices are measured and actively improved. The team uses data to identify and close gaps. Feedback loops are working.
5
Optimizing
Continuous improvement is embedded in the culture. Best practices are shared across teams. The team innovates on process itself.

The 6 Phases

The 50 standards span 6 phases of the software development lifecycle. Each phase captures a different dimension of engineering maturity.

📋Requirements8 standards

How work items are defined, tracked, and prioritized. Covers issue tracking, acceptance criteria, estimation, backlog hygiene, and traceability from requirements to code.

🏗️Design7 standards

How architecture and technical decisions are made and documented. Covers ADRs, technical documentation, API contracts, tech debt tracking, dependency management, and design reviews.

💻Development10 standards

How code is written, reviewed, and merged. Covers branch protection, code review, PR workflows, commit conventions, linting, secrets management, and documentation practices.

🧪Testing9 standards

How quality is verified before production. Covers CI pipelines, test coverage, security scanning, integration testing, CI reliability, and build performance.

🚀Release8 standards

How software is packaged, versioned, and shipped. Covers release cadence, semantic versioning, release notes, change failure rate, and rollback capability.

📡Operations8 standards

How production systems are monitored, maintained, and recovered. Covers incident response, postmortems, MTTR, code ownership, SLOs, and operational review cadence.

Evidence-Based, Not Survey-Based

Unlike maturity assessments that rely on self-reported surveys, Concordance scores are derived from observable evidence in your development tools. We analyze:

GitHub / GitLab
Branch protection, PR reviews, commit patterns, CI workflows, release tags, file structure
38 standards
Jira / Linear
Ticket quality, sprint patterns, estimation, backlog health, priority management
8 standards
Slack / Teams
Design discussions, decision records, review cadence
4 standards
PagerDuty / Datadog
Incident response, MTTR, SLO adherence, alert patterns
6 standards

Confidence Scoring

Not all signals are equally reliable. Concordance assigns a confidence score (0–100%) to each standard based on data availability and signal strength. Standards marked "Low confidence" have limited data — connecting more integrations or generating more activity improves confidence. Confidence is transparently displayed alongside every score so you know exactly what to trust.

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