Introduction

A DCAM^® assessment can either analyze an organization based on its capabilities, its sub-capabilities, or both. A standard scoring methodology, based on the DCAM Assessment Scoring Guide, is required to eliminate any variance that could occur when comparing the results of a capability assessment and a sub-capability assessment.

DCAM-7 Component Score Calculation – Without Analytics Management

To correctly calculate an overall DCAM-7 Component score, it is essential to begin the calculation by averaging the scores for each sub-capability respondent to the capability level. This ensures that sub-capabilities and capabilities will be evenly weighted if there are both sub-capability and capability respondents. Once a respondent’s sub-capability scores are averaged to the capability level, that respondent’s score will be averaged with the other respondents who participated at either the sub-capability or capability level to calculate the capability score. Capability scores in each component are averaged together to calculate the component score, and the component scores are averaged together to calculate the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score.

It is important not to use any rounding until calculating the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score, at which point the answer will be presented to two decimal places.

It is also important to make sure that respondents do not skip any questions during the assessment, which will skew the weighting of the overall responses. If a respondent does not know how to respond to a particular question, their score for that question should be a 1.

If respondents from a survey only participate at either the sub-capability or capability level, the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score will still be calculated in the same manner, but without the contributions from the other type of respondent.

Lastly, overall sub-capability scores can be calculated by averaging all the responses for a particular sub-capability to understand and identify strengths and weaknesses at these particular sub-capabilities, but these scores are not used in the calculation of the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score.

Model

Incorrect Method of Calculation

The reason the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score is calculated by averaging the sub-capability scores from each respondent to the capability level, rather than averaging all of the responses of each sub-capability first, and then averaging those scores together, is due to the weighting issue that occurs when a survey consists of respondents from both the capability and sub-capability level.

Example

In the above model, if we calculated the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score by first calculating the overall sub-capability scores, and then averaging them together to the capability level, it would look like:

Calculating each of the sub-capability scores first, before averaging to the capability level, reduces the contribution of each sub-capability respondent (in this example: 4 respondents) to only one capability score that has equal weight with the respondents who participated at the capability level.

In this example, even though the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score is only off one basis point from the original calculation, it can be assumed that if each capability were calculated in this fashion, the impact to the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score would have been much greater.

Having a consistent method to calculate the overall DCAM-7 Component score prevents confusion and ensures that DCAM scores maintain a high level of credibility.

Overall DCAM-8 Component Score Calculation – With 8.0 Analytics Management

To calculate the Overall DCAM-7 Component score, Overall 8.0 Analytics Management score, and Overall DCAM-8 Component score, the calculation is essentially the same: Sub-capability respondents will have their individual answers averaged together to the capability level, to be averaged together with Capability respondents (if applicable), and then jointly combined into the Component score calculation. If an organization wants to utilize the Analytics Management analysis into their assessment – they would complete the questions for Component 8.0. If a company chooses not to include the 8.0 Analytics Management component, the 8.0 questions and scores can be disregarded, and the calculation performed as before.

Assuming the 8.0 Analytics Management component is included in the assessment, Sub-capability and Capability respondents would answer the questions and their scores would be averaged to the Component level as normal, but the Component Score level is when 3 different scores would be calculated by the following:

• The Overall DCAM-7 Component Score: The average of Component Scores 1-7
• The Overall 8.0 Analytics Management Score: The average of 8.0 Capabilities
• The Overall DCAM-8 Component Score: The average of Component scores 1-8.

Incorrect Method of Calculation

It is important to recognize that calculating the Overall DCAM-8 Component score does not mean averaging the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score with the Overall 8.0 Analytics Management score, but rather is averaging all eight components together.

Example

In Model 3 (above), if we calculated the Overall DCAM-8 Component Score by averaging the Overall 8.0 Analytics Management Score with the Overall DCAM-7 Component Score, it would look like:

Averaging the scores in this way would significantly over-weight the contribution of the 8.0 Analytics Management score on the Overall DCAM-8 Component score.

In conclusion, it is important when calculating DCAM scores, to average participants’ responses to the Capability level, and then calculate either the Overall DCAM-7 Component or Overall DCAM-8 Component score based on whether or not the 8.0 Analytics Management component is incorporated into the assessment.

Comparing Scores

Overall DCAM-7 Component and DCAM-8 Component

To compare an assessment score with a prior version of DCAM that did not include the 8.0 Analytics Management component, a comparison can only be made between the Overall DCAM-7 Component Scores. Once you have two or more assessments completed with the 8.0 Analytics Management component included, you can then make comparisons of the Overall 8.0 Analytics Management Score and the Overall DCAM-8 Component Score.