Peer group and statistical methods
Benchmarks do not show individual organizations. They show what the distribution of peers looks like.
Peer group construction
A peer group is typically defined by:
- Industry
- Size band (usually revenue)
- Region or geography
- Minimum sample sizes before a metric is reported
- Exclusion or trimming of extreme outliers in some datasets
- Anonymization that prevents identifying individual contributors
Percentiles and quartiles
Common statistics:
- Median – the 50th percentile
- Lower quartile – the 25th percentile
- Upper quartile – the 75th percentile
- Minimum and maximum, sometimes with outliers trimmed
- Median as a line or dot
- Interquartile range as a band or box
- Your organization as a separate marker
- If you are near median, you are typical
- Inside the band, you are within a normal range
- Outside the band, you are structurally different and should know why
Archetypes
Archetypes are patterns derived by clustering organizations based on their spend structure.
Types supported with Interactive Benchmarking data:
- Hardware Technology-centric: A Technology operating model where delivery relies heavily
on owned or directly managed infrastructure. Typical characteristics include:
- Larger on-prem or colocation footprint, more physical infrastructure to run.
- More spend on infrastructure platforms and underlying tech stacks.
- Often more internally managed operations (or at least hardware ownership), even if some labor is outsourced.
- Software Technology-centric: A Technology operating model where delivery relies heavily
on software platforms, tooling, and licenses rather than owned hardware. Typical characteristics include:
- Higher use of SaaS, platform subscriptions, automation tooling, and enterprise software stacks.
- Infrastructure may be abstracted (cloud or managed), shifting emphasis away from hardware ownership.
- More spend on security, observability, ITSM, collaboration, developer platforms, and enterprise apps.
- Vendor-centric: A Technology operating model where a large portion of work is performed
by third parties. Typical characteristics include:
- Heavy managed services, systems integrators, outsourcing partners, and contractors.
- Internal teams focus more on governance, architecture, vendor management, and product ownership.
- Delivery capacity is scaled by vendors more than hiring.
- People-centric: A Technology operating model where capability is delivered primarily by
internal employees. Typical characteristics include:
- Larger in-house engineering and operations teams.
- Strong internal ownership of delivery and run activities.
- Vendors may exist, but internal teams do most of the work.
Use cases:
- Understanding which broad pattern your organization resembles.
- Explaining that you look different from the median because you intentionally follow a different archetype.