Tool for evaluating organizational emergency management capability.

Crises or emergencies have drawn attention to the need of good emergency management capability in affected organizations or regions. An ongoing subproject in a Swedish multidisciplinary research programme aims at identifying areas or processes that are potentially important to include in the work of developing and improving an organization’s resilience and emergency management capability. This paper presents preliminary findings from interviews conducted to identify such areas or processes and proposes a first version of a methodology that can enable organizations to continuously evaluate and improve their organizational emergency management capability. Interviews were conducted with four representatives from different administrations within a regional public body in Sweden. Preliminary results show that when evaluating organizational emergency management capability, areas or key processes such as the following ought to be included: assessment of existing organizational emergency management capability, risk and vulnerability analysis, competence provision, operational surveillance and alarm functions, operationalization, communication, safety culture and organizational culture, leadership and management, individual and organizational learning. The proposed methodology for self evaluation of capability is based on a maturity model containing five maturity levels, low to high. An organization develops in stages upwards through the levels by building on the strengths and removing the weaknesses from the previous level. Each maturity level is described based on how the organization learns and reacts to new knowledge and experiences. Each area or process is evaluated and described according to the five maturity levels. The self evaluation provides for analyses, discussion and reflection concerning the proactive management activities taking place in an organization

Evaluating the quality of project planning: a model and field results

Faulty planning will result in project failure, whereas high-quality project planning increases the project's chances of success. The paper reports on the successful development and implementation of a model aimed at evaluating the quality of project planning. The model is based on both the abilities required of the project manager and the organizational support required for a proper project management infrastructure. The model was validated and applied by 282 project managers in nine organizations, where strong and weak planning processes were identified and analysed

Operational excellence assessment framework for manufacturing companies

Operational Excellence (OE) is a consequence of an enterprise-wide practises based on correct principles that can be classified under four dimensions; Culture, Continuous Process Improvement, Enterprise Alignment and Results. To achieve OE, organisations have to attain a high maturity level and measurable success in the four dimensions as assessed externally by accredited institutions or consultants. External assessment is costly and can be inaccurate due to the lack of in depth knowledge of the organisation by external assessors, on the contrary, self-assessment of an organisations OE is cost effective and accurate if performed with a complete tool which assesses all four dimensions of OE. A complete OE self-assessment tool is currently unavailable, thus this study focuses on the development of a complete OE self-assessment tool. Using a matrix to critically evaluate and compare existing self-assessment tools in areas such as dimensions assessed, scoring criteria and usability, a complete self-assessment tool is then developed based on the combination of existing assessment tools. The tool is validated through the application, by managers, within a manufacturing company that already implements aspects of lean in order to self-assess its OE. The results of the assessment form the basis on which a roadmap to achieving OE is then developed

Non-Technical Individual Skills are Weakly Connected to the Maturity of Agile Practices

Context: Existing knowledge in agile software development suggests that individual competency (e.g. skills) is a critical success factor for agile projects. While assuming that technical skills are important for every kind of software development project, many researchers suggest that non-technical individual skills are especially important in agile software development. Objective: In this paper, we investigate whether non-technical individual skills can predict the use of agile practices. Method: Through creating a set of multiple linear regression models using a total of 113 participants from agile teams in six software development organizations from The Netherlands and Brazil, we analyzed the predictive power of non-technical individual skills in relation to agile practices. Results: The results show that there is surprisingly low power in using non-technical individual skills to predict (i.e. explain variance in) the mature use of agile practices in software development. Conclusions: Therefore, we conclude that looking at non-technical individual skills is not the optimal level of analysis when trying to understand, and explain, the mature use of agile practices in the software development context. We argue that it is more important to focus on the non-technical skills as a team-level capacity instead of assuring that all individuals possess such skills when understanding the use of the agile practices.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur

The Role of Boards in Reviewing Information Technology Governance (ITG) as Part of Organizational Control Environment Assessments

IT Governance (ITG) is an important topic as US companies must now monitor ITG under the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) (Hoffmann, 2003). Trites (2003) indicates that directors are responsible for strategic planning, internal control structures and business risk. The control environment is defined in Australian Auditing Standard AUS 402 to mean "the overall attitude, awareness and actions of management regarding internal control and its importance to the entity". This paper contributes to the knowledge of ITG by forming an integrated ITG Literature (IIL) which links prior research to four key dimensions of ITG. The paper presents a review of literature on ITG performance measurement systems which assess the ability of organizations to achieve these four ITG dimensions. A revised ITG Dimensions Model offered for consideration. The final contribution of the paper is to propose critical issues Boards should consider as part of their assessment of organizational control environments

Designing and managing Organizational Interoperability with organizational capabilities and roadmaps

This paper discusses organizational interoperability issues in through the study of two cases. Then it presents a framework which can help to design and manage this interoperability, by driving the development of “organizational capabilities”.Organization learning, Functional interoperability