ICoNOs MM: The IT-enabled Collaborative Networked Organizations Maturity Model

The focus of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive model for assessing and improving maturity of business-IT alignment (B-ITa) in collaborative networked organizations (CNOs): the ICoNOs MM. This two dimensional maturity model (MM) addresses five levels of maturity as well as four domains to which these levels apply: partnering structure, information system (IS) architecture, process architecture and coordination. The model can be used to benchmark and support continuous improvement of B-ITa process areas in CNOs

Agile, Web Engineering and Capability Maturity ModelI ntegration : A systematic literature review

Context Agile approaches are an alternative for organizations developing software, particularly for those who develop Web applications. Besides, CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) models are well-established approaches focused on assessing the maturity of an organization that develops software. Web Engineering is the field of Software Engineering responsible for analyzing and studying the specific characteristics of the Web. The suitability of an Agile approach to help organizations reach a certain CMMI maturity level in Web environments will be very interesting, as they will be able to keep the ability to quickly react and adapt to changes as long as their development processes get mature. Objective This paper responds to whether it is feasible or not, for an organization developing Web systems, to achieve a certain maturity level of the CMMI-DEV model using Agile methods. Method The proposal is analyzed by means of a systematic literature review of the relevant approaches in the field, defining a characterization schema in order to compare them to introduce the current state-of-the-art. Results The results achieved after the systematic literature review are presented, analyzed and compared against the defined schema, extracting relevant conclusions for the different dimensions of the problem: compatibility, compliance, experience, maturity and Web. Conclusion It is concluded that although the definition of an Agile approach to meet the different CMMI maturity levels goals could be possible for an organization developing Web systems, there is still a lack of detailed studies and analysis on the field

A Management Maturity Model (MMM) for project-based organisational performance assessment

Common sense suggests that organisations are more likely to deliver successful projects if they have systems in place that reflect a mature project environment based on a culture of continuous improvement. This paper develops and discusses a Management Maturity Model (MMM) to assess the maturity of project management organisations through a customisable, systematic, strategic and practical methodology inspired from the seminal work of Darwin, Deming, Drucker and Daniel. The model presented is relevant to organisations, such as construction and engineering companies, that prefer to use the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK™ Guide) published by the Project Management Institute (PMI), but without the disadvantages of excessive time and cost commitments and a ‘one size fits all’ approach linked to rigid increments of maturity. It offers a game-changing advance in the application of project-based organisational performance assessment compared to existing market solutions that are unnecessarily complex. The feasibility of MMM is field-tested using a medium-sized data centre infrastructure firm in Tehran

What Can Be Learned from CMMi Failures?

The software crisis has been around since 1968 when NATO first identified the problematic nature of software development. In recognition of the need to manage the process of software development many methodologies have been proposed over the years. A recent contribution to this rich set of rigorous software development methodologies is the Software Engineering Institute\u27s (SEI) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMi) methodology. While the minimal previous research on CMMi has extolled it, learning how to implement CMMi successfully requires leaning also from its failures. And yet, despite apparent anecdotes, little is known on this topic possibly because of the reluctance of many companies to wash their dirty linen in public. Based on a set of in-depth interviews accompanied with survey verification, this study examines the assessed effectiveness and efficiency of CMMi as implemented in several projects in a large high tech company in which only low levels of CMMi maturity were reached. In an exploratory manner this study shows the need to differentiate between the quality of the software product developed through CMMi and the quality of the process involved. The study also shows that whether the product is an off the shelf product or a customized one has a direct bearing of the quality of the product developed under CMMi methodology and the process itself. In particular, we discuss why some projects reach only a low maturity level of CMMi even though the organization as a whole might typically reach high maturity levels

Agile in Waterfall : Improving the Flexibility of Product Development

This Thesis concentrates on improving the existing Waterfall based product development model used in the case company, to meet the changing needs of product development. Product development is more and more based on standardized and open source components and competition in any industry has increased as the entry barriers has been lowered. Therefore adjustments were needed to enhance the flexibility of product development and shorten the time to market for new products and features. The research approach applied in this study is action research. The model development is done in iterations, in two action research cycles. The data used for the development of the model are collected in the interviews, discussions, a brainstorming session, and a Kaizen workshop in the case company. The workshop participants were selected to get a broad perspective with people from different departments, including product business management, project office, quality management, system architects and system engineering. Altogether 21 persons give their view on product development and the new model creation. The model development is done by creating and verifying two prototypes, Prototype 1 and 2, which were developed in several workshops (Workshop 1-4) with subject matter experts and key stakeholders. The prototypes and verification of the prototypes led to the proposal of the final model to the case company. The outcome of the Thesis is a proposal for a new product development model based on Agile development principles, combined with the required tools to meet the targeted levels of quality and management visibility applied in the case company

Feasibility study on incorporating IEC/ISO27001 information security management system (ISMS) standard in it services environment

Feasibility Study on incorporating IEC/ISO27001 Information Security Management System (ISMS) in IT Services Environment is a research study by taking an organization as a case study to carry out a feasibility study on existing maturity level of managing information security and propose an implementation approach to the organization based on ISO27001 ISMS standards. The activities involve the security gap assessment, drafting the mandatory documents as per ISO 27001 ISMS standard requirement. The objective of this study is to identify the common information security incidents and the ISO27001 ISMS practices on corrective and prevention actions. Beside, this research study is focusing on analyzing the current state of an organization by conducting a feasibility study on the readiness of ISO27001 ISMS practiced by the organization. The methodology of this research study was derived with the research operational framework that comprised of several project phases, ISO27001 ISMS implementation phases that mapped to the deliverables. The deliverables and expected results are series of document sets that must comply to the ISO27001 ISMS standard such as initial draft of ISMS policy manual, risk assessment methodology, risk assessment report, statement of applicability (SOA) will be developed to meet the ISO27001 ISMS requirement and criteria. Also, the mandatory activities such as gap assessment, information security risk assessment will be proposed and conducted with the relevant reports to be prepared as part of the results and findings to accomplish the objectives of this research study. The findings of the feasibility study from the gap assessment that has been performed within an organization are not meeting the requirement of ISO27001 ISMS. Hence, this research study proposed the implementation approach based on ISO27001 ISMS standards to implement the ISMS controls to close the gaps and mitigate the risks identified from the gap assessment findings

An empirical investigation of knowledge management support for software projects.

Projects are unique by definition. Due to this novelty software development projects, in common with all other projects, require knowledge for effective implementation. Most knowledge management frameworks reported in the literature address the organisational need to manage knowledge. The existing frameworks typically discuss the dichotomy between tacit and explicit knowledge, and lay an emphasis on managing the latter. However, software development projects rely upon the experience, creativity and intuition of individual team members to address unstructured situations typified by inherent uncertainty, ambiguity and change. Therefore software projects require the facilitation and interaction of tacit knowledge along with managing and leveraging explicit knowledge.This research examines how tacit and explicit knowledge generated while implementing a software development project can be leveraged and effectively reused in future software projects. In order to address the need to provide knowledge management support to software projects an extended case study was conducted at one of the world's largest software project-based organisations. The aim of the research was to identify and analyse the flow of knowledge, and the capabilities required to support this flow. The research design utilised a combination of open-ended interviews, survey questionnaires, observations of team functioning, work methods and development practices, and a detailed examination of the knowledge management infrastructure and process capabilities. The extensive and exceptional access negotiated for this project enabled the research to focus on a single organisation and resulted in 100 hours of interviews and 340 hours of observations from 98 ongoing projects. Established case study protocols were used for data collection. The data analysis focused on determining categories from the different streams of activities and assigning attributes using Nudist software for data reduction and displaying group-nodes, and conclusion drawing. This enabled the research to establish the 'processual' nature of knowledge, and identify the capabilities required to mobilise and utilise knowledge assets. The research critically analysed the three parallel themes of knowledge management, project management and software engineering, and the outcome of the conceptual synthesis and validation is a dynamic model which represents the knowledge processes that facilitate the flow of tacit and explicit knowledge between software projects. The model depicts the relationships and interactions between the functional areas of the development effort, and presents a continuous and long-term view of supporting the implementation of software projects and developing knowledge practices. For software project-based organisations this research has implications for their ability to manage context, provide feedback and facilitate interaction, and thus build upon their existing knowledge resources and capabilities. The research provides such organisations with a perspective to achieve excellence not only through optimisation of software process improvement, but also through learning, and, the creation and sharing of tacit and explicit knowledge as facilitated by the proposed model