Conformance criteria let a specific operating model programme demonstrate it actually followed OMDDMS®, phase by phase, with evidence. They test a piece of work, not a person, and they are not the same as certification or a maturity score.
A person can pass the Foundation exam without ever running a transformation. An organisation can score well on the Maturity Assessment and still run one specific programme poorly. Conformance answers a narrower, sharper question: did this particular piece of operating model change actually follow the Standard, or did it just say it did?
A maturity level tells you how capable an organisation generally is. It does not tell you whether a specific programme, running now, did what the OMDDM requires at each phase it has passed through. Conformance criteria answer that second question with a yes-or-no discipline rather than a graded score, because a board asking whether a live programme is following the Standard needs an answer it can act on.
Each phase has defined outputs. Conformance asks whether those outputs exist and hold up to scrutiny, not whether the phase was scheduled in the plan.
A stated, agreed boundary of change exists and was agreed before design work started, not reconstructed afterwards to match whatever got built.
A baseline Maturity Assessment was run and evidenced, not assumed or estimated from memory once the programme was already under way.
The impact of the proposed change was assessed against the baseline established in Discover, not assumed from the solution the programme had already chosen.
The target operating model specifies organisation design, capability and service model, and decision rights, not a slide of ambitions with the detail left for later.
Governed and ungoverned change are distinguished and tracked during the changeover, not discovered retrospectively once the current and target models have already diverged.
Performance is tracked against the targets Design actually specified, not against generic KPIs assembled after go-live because the original targets were never written down.
The operating model has a named owner and decision-making authority defined across the nine governance areas, not a steering group that quietly stopped meeting after go-live.
A programme currently in Transition cannot conform on Transition alone. It has to be able to show its Scope, Discover, Analyse and Design outputs too, whether they were produced within the OMDDM or were already in place when the programme entered the method. A well-run Transition built on an unstated Scope is not evidence that the Standard was followed; it is evidence that the gaps were pushed further downstream.
Conformance is assessed by a certified Practitioner or an accredited assessor, against the outputs a programme can actually produce as evidence. It is not declared by the programme about itself.
A programme claiming conformance has to be able to produce what each phase requires on request: its stated Scope, its baseline Maturity Assessment, its target operating model, and its governance structure. Where a phase's outputs cannot be produced, the programme is not conformant on that phase, regardless of how it describes its own progress. This gives a board or a regulator something to test a live programme against, rather than relying on a RAG status the programme wrote about itself.
All three sit under OMDDMS®, and it is easy to conflate them. They test three different things.
Foundation and Practitioner certification confirm that an individual understands the Standard and passed an exam. It says nothing about any specific transformation that person has, or hasn't, worked on.
The Maturity Assessment scores how consistently and capably an organisation operates, component by component, on a five-level scale. It describes a general state, not a specific programme's conduct.
Conformance criteria test whether one particular piece of operating model change actually followed the Standard, phase by phase, with evidence. It is a pass bar for a piece of work, not a scale for an organisation.
Questions about what conformance tests, who assesses it, and how it differs from certification and maturity.
Conformance shows that a specific operating model programme actually followed OMDDMS®, phase by phase, with evidence. It tests a piece of work, not a person, and it is a pass bar rather than a graded scale.
Certification tests a person: that an individual understands the Standard and passed an exam. The Maturity Assessment tests an organisation's general capability on a five-level scale. Conformance tests whether one specific programme followed the Standard, with evidence.
Conformance is assessed by a certified Practitioner or an accredited assessor, against the outputs the programme can produce as evidence. It is not declared by the programme about itself.
Yes, provided it can evidence the outputs of the earlier phases, whether they were produced within the OMDDM or were already in place when the programme entered the method. Conformance is cumulative: a programme in Transition must also be able to show its Scope, Discover, Analyse and Design outputs.
The programme is not conformant on that phase, regardless of how the programme describes its own progress.
Read the seven phases in detail, or become a certified Practitioner to assess programmes against the Standard.