Enterprise IT Maturity Assessments

Capability maturity for EIT refers to its ability to reliably perform. Maturity is a measured by an organization’s readiness and capability expressed through its people, processes, data and technologies and the consistent measurement practices that are in place. A typical description of organizational maturity was developed by Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory:

	Level 1 Performed	Level 2 Managed	Level 3 Established	Level 4 Predictable	Level 5 Optimizing
People	Success depends on individual heroics. “Fire fighting is a way of life.” Relationships between disciplines are uncoordinated, perhaps even adversarial.	Success depends on individuals and management system supports. Commitments are understood and managed. People are trained.	Project groups work together, perhaps as an integrated product team. Training is planned and provided according to roles.	A strong sense of teamwork exists within each project.	A strong sense of teamwork exists across the organization. Everyone is involved in process improvement.
Process	Few stable processes exist or are used.	Documented and stable estimating, planning, and commitment processes are at the project level.	Integrated management and engineering processes are used across the organization.	Processes are quantitatively understood and stabilized.	Processes are continuously and systematically improved.
Technology	The introduction of new technology is risky.	Technology supports established, stable activities.	New technologies are evaluated on a qualitative basis.	New technologies are evaluated on a quantitative basis.	New technologies are proactively pursued and deployed.
Measurement	Data collection and analysis are ad hoc	Planning and management data is used by individual projects.	Data is collected and used in all defined processes. Data is systematically shared across projects.	Data definition and collection are standardized across the organization Data is used to understand the process qualitatively and stabilize it.	Data is used to evaluate and select process improvements.

The organization’s maturity directly relates to the ability to execute the IT strategy; therefore there is a need to assess maturity as an input to a realistic plan and as a guide to maturing IT to desired levels. In other words, unless the IT organization ‘knows itself,’ it can’t make plans to do more or to improve. Adoption of “lessons learned” is a key improvement strategy. Mature EIT organizations will collect “lessons learned” during each project as it is executing, and will build the results into organizational improvements on a regular basis. When reviewed and areas prioritized by management, a maturity assessment is an input to the EIT strategy formulation, since its results may highlight its performance constraints.

Maturity assessment involves scoring against criteria and a ranking scheme. This assessment is generally organized in ascending steps with strategies on how to move up the maturity scale. Scales are often 1-5 and indicate increasing levels of maturity. Some schemes allow for scoring that includes decimal points (e.g., 2.5).

1. Performed: Activities are performed in an ad hoc manner.
2. Managed: Activities are performed with managed processes.
3. Defined: Activities are defined so the organization can performed them in a uniformed manner.
4. Measured: Oversight is given to the performed activities to ensure performance and uniformity.
5. Optimized: Continuous improvement processes are in place on the defined and measured processes.

Periodic reassessments are performed to gauge progress against the baseline assessment and prior periods. Adjustments to the efforts to maintain and improve maturity can then be made against possible strategic priority changes, governance initiatives, and roadmap resets.

Maturity assessments on internationally recognized frameworks generally involve external auditors with certification and recertification requirements. Engagement in the maturity assessment and improvement process requires a minimum level of organization self-awareness to the issues and commitment to the improvements necessary. A cultural readiness, resistance, and capability assessment may be built into a maturity assessment.

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) [18] is a standard reference model for process improvement with cross-sector applicability with special focuses:

1. Product and service development — CMMI for Development (CMMI-DEV)
2. Service establishment, management, — CMMI for Services (CMMI-SVC)
3. Product and service acquisition — CMMI for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ)
4. Data management — CMMI for Data (CMMI-DMM)

IT-CMF

Getting better at EIT strategy and governance requires both organizational change in how IT is managed and the development of individuals. The IT-Capability Maturity Model (IT-CMF) takes an organizational management approach to improving IT capability rather than a one focused on processes and thus is very complimentary to CMMI. IT-CMF helps organizations to measure, develop, and monitor their IT capability maturity progression for maximum benefit in their particular context. It consists of 35 IT management capabilities and these are organized into four macro capabilities: managing IT like a business; managing the IT budget; managing the IT capability; managing IT for business value. Its 35 Critical Capabilities (CCs) are defined in as “A defined IT management domain that helps mobilize and deploy IT-based resources to effect a desired end, often in combination with other resources and capabilities” (Curley et al. 2015). Each has five different levels of maturity starting from "initial" and going up to ‘optimizing’. The IT-CMF includes questionnaires to assess current maturity and a suite of practice recommendations to improve maturity.