IVI Framework Viewer

The Innovation Value Institute (IVI) was established in 2006 as a not-for-profit, multi- disciplinary research and education institute within Maynooth University, Ireland. It was co-founded by Intel Corporation and the university with the objective of creating an international consortium of companies and public sector organizations to build on work already carried out in Intel and create an international standard for the management of information technology.

As well as the consortium's commitment of funding and in-kind resources, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland, through the Technology Centre programme, support IVI's research agenda to focus on the creation and accumulation of knowledge and best-available practices in the management of IT.

Consortium Membership Profile

IVI supports and is supported by an international membership consortium of industry, academia, and public sector organizations who collaborate to deepen their understanding and develop their ability to manage their IT functions and realize the value of IT for their organizations. The consortium currently includes over 100 members, including many of the world's largest and most prestigious enterprises. Collaboration with the consortium members is a key part of IVI's research and development process.

Research and Development: Open Innovation and Design Science Research

The research and development process in IVI is based on the principles of open innovation, originally proposed by Henry Chesbrough⁷ and extended to Open Innovation 2.0 by the EU Open Innovation Strategy and Policy Group⁸. In this approach, IT professionals across multiple industries, together with academic researchers jointly define the research agenda, perform the research, and validate the results. This collaborative, non-competitive way of sharing information and insights greatly accelerates the generation of new approaches, tools and techniques, helps to disseminate new practices among a diversity of organizations and to collate experimental results, and enables participants to quickly identify what works and what doesn't, and in what circumstances. It also provides IVI with an essential feedback loop that ensures that its research continues to be both relevant and rigorous.

The core research paradigm used by IVI is design science research^{9 10 11}. Design science research creates and evaluates IT artefacts intended to solve organizational problems¹², the main goal being to develop knowledge that professionals and practitioners can use to design solutions to problems experienced in their field¹³. While behavioural science dominated twentieth century information systems research, design science research is today becoming more mainstream, with IVI a leading adopter. A fundamental goal of design science in information systems research is utility — that is, that the resultant artefact should be useful in addressing a real-world problem or challenge. IVI addresses utility by making pragmatic validation an integral part of its research approach.

Research in IVI is overseen by a Steering Board, which includes both industry leaders and academic researchers. Research is conducted in an iterative and staged approach, in which artefacts and theory are generated and verified, using both inductive and deductive processes. Research work is carried out by workgroups that include industry-domain experts and academic subject-matter experts. Each workgroup is facilitated by a dedicated IVI researcher who manages the research direction within the workgroup, and the resultant research output is codified into standard artefacts.

The Origins of IT-CMF

In 2000, when Intel Corporation embarked on a programme of transformation of its IT function, they found that there was no comprehensive, integrated, CIO-level framework available¹⁴. Over the following years, they developed a maturity framework approach that proved to be highly successful. That approach, and the lessons learned from their experience of applying it, were captured in Prof. Martin Curley's book, Managing IT for Business Value¹⁵.

When IVI was established in 2006, the Institute adopted the maturity framework from Intel Corporation, and continued to further develop and refine it. Since then, IVI has substantially enhanced and extended the framework with further research and feedback from users, to make it relevant to decision-makers in any industry (public or private) who need to manage key information technology capabilities to improve agility, innovation, and value.

IVI has also helped incubate a global professional-services ecosystem to satisfy the demand for IT-CMF training and consultancy. Certification programmes based on IT-CMF are available internationally; these equip suitably qualified individuals and organizations with the skills necessary to apply the framework to improve organizational performance.

Organizations that manage their IT capabilities better perform better¹⁶. However, many organizations regularly struggle to manage their IT capabilities in a systematic way. The IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) enables decision-makers to identify and develop the IT capabilities they need in the organization to deliver agility, innovation and value for the organization.

Comprehensive Scope and Focus on Business Value

An analysis in 2011 of over 150 IT management tools revealed a significant gap in the available offerings, in that there was no framework that covered all IT domains and exhibited a significant value focus — see Figure 1¹⁰. While each individual management tool or framework had the possibility of adding value in their specific area of focus, the complexity and inefficacy of using so many tools presented a challenge for organizations wishing to use them.

The lack of a holistic approach to managing IT for business value was similarly identified in a summary analysis of key academic papers on information systems research¹⁷. This failed to find a single paper dealing with business value as a significant or central theme.

Until IT-CMF, there was no single integrated enterprise IT approach for designing, operating, and supporting the increasingly integrated global computing and communications environment, particularly from a business value perspective. IT-CMF is explicitly designed to cover a range of IT capabilities needed in an IT function to deliver agility, innovation and value for the organization. It is also flexibly designed to allow new capabilities be captured and represented as they emerge.

IT-CMF and Other Industry Frameworks

There are a number of frameworks available to managers and practitioners that address the needs of specialist niches or specific aspects of managing IT. None, however, cover the full breadth of a CIO's responsibilities, nor do different frameworks integrate with one another seamlessly to provide a comprehensive solution. Many aim to optimize specific or local areas, without truly appreciating the possible unintended negative consequences for other areas of the organization.

By contrast, IT-CMF aims for comprehensive coverage of the components (or critical capabilities) needed to address a CIO's responsibilities. It leverages the concept of dynamic capabilities¹⁸, by providing a mechanism not only for developing the capabilities, but also for enabling them to be reconfigured as necessary to adapt to changing circumstances and strategies. It provides a portfolio of options from which CIOs and other senior managers can design an improvement programme that is uniquely suited to their particular IT capability needs and their business environment.

IT-CMF builds on the maturity model conceptualization adopted by the Software Engineering Institute for the Software CMM model^{19 20}, but as well as focusing on process and capability maturity, IT-CMF also focuses on outcome maturity — that is, on the specific business outcomes expected at different levels of capability maturity.

What IT-CMF Provides

IT-CMF provides the basis for systematically and continually improving the performance of the IT function in an organization, and for measuring progress and value delivered. It enables organizations to devise more robust strategies, make better-informed decisions, and consistently deliver increased levels of agility, innovation and value.

IT-CMF offers:

• A holistic business-led approach that enables performance across the IT function to be managed consistently and comprehensively.
• Support for the development of enduring IT capabilities with a primary focus on achieving business agility, innovation and value.
• A platform and a common language for exchanging information between diverse stakeholders, enabling them to set goals, take action and evaluate improvements.
• An umbrella framework that complements other frameworks already in use in the organization to drive cohesive performance improvement.

The IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF) is currently used by hundreds of organizations worldwide, and is fast becoming the de facto standard for the management of IT in large organizations²¹.

A capability is the quality of being capable, to have the capacity or ability to do something, to achieve pre-determined goals and objectives. Collectively, capabilities coordinate the activities of individuals and groups — linking individual actions into seamless chains of actions, leading to repeatable patterns of interaction that become more efficient and effective as they are practised and internalized. An organizational capability refers to an organization's ability to perform a set of co-ordinated tasks, utilizing organizational resources, for the purposes of achieving a particular end result²².

Capabilities must work in a consistent manner. Having a capability means that the organization can perform an activity repeatedly and reliably. Organizations build their capabilities progressively in a cyclical process of trial, feedback, learning, and evolution. Organizations must be able to realign their resources in response to changes in strategy or the environment in which they operate. They must be able to embrace change, quickly innovating and reconfiguring resources to capture and exploit new, unforeseen opportunities. This is often referred to as ‘dynamic’ capabilities. IT-CMF facilitates this flexibility and responsiveness, and enables an organization to purposefully create, extend or modify its resource base to address rapidly changing circumstances²³.

Dynamic capabilities include the ability to search, explore, acquire, assimilate, and apply knowledge about resources and opportunities, and about how resources can be configured to exploit opportunities. Organizations with such capabilities have greater intensity of organizational learning, and are able to leverage feedback cycles more effectively, and thereby continually build stronger capabilities.

IT Capabilities

An organization's ability to orchestrate IT-based resources to create desired outcomes is a product of its IT capabilities. In IT-CMF, an IT capability is the ability to mobilize and deploy (that is, integrate, reconfigure, acquire and release) IT-based resources to effect a desired end, often in combination with other resources and capabilities (adapted¹⁶). Resources, in this context, can be either tangible (including financial, physical/infrastructural, human) or intangible (including software, data, intellectual property, branding, culture).

Relationships between Capabilities, Competences, and Processes

Business processes are sequences of actions that organizations engage in to accomplish specific tasks. They represent how an organization's resources are exploited, and can be thought of as the routines or activities that an organization develops to get something done ^{24 25}. Business processes require the competences of individual employees and groups for their effective execution. In turn, business processes help individual employees and groups develop competence in particular ways of working²⁶. Processes and competences are thus mutually dependent and reinforcing.

Many organizations focus on process management, which has value, but may not equip them to respond to changing business strategies or environmental forces. While effective and efficient processes are critical for business operations, these processes must be regularly evaluated, modified and matured in anticipation of and in response to changing forces to deliver sustainable value²⁷. Capability management provides the vital link between the business's strategy and environment and its business processes. It gives the organization the ability to create patterns of learning and adjustment to establish and maintain synergetic relationships between competences (people), processes (routines), and resources (assets) to accomplish a desired end.

IT-CMF defines business value as the contribution that IT-based resources and capabilities make to helping an organization achieve its objectives¹⁵. Those objectives may be internal or external to the IT function; IT's greatest potential, however, lies in business enablement across the wider organization — that is, the organization's IT capability plays an important role in developing other business capabilities¹⁶. It is the resource configurations created with or enabled by IT capabilities that deliver value, rather than the IT capabilities themselves²⁸. In addition, IT capabilities are just one part of the value creation process — they often need to be combined with non-IT-based resources and capabilities to fully realize value. IT-CMF helps organizations to continually enhance their capabilities to ensure that the resource (re)configurations are always aligned in support of business strategy and in response to environmental forces.

Each organization has a unique starting point and a unique operating context. What works in one organization may not necessarily work to the same extent in another. The particular context can limit the efficacy of a given practice, even when it is applied in similar, but subtly different, problem and/or organizational situations. In recognition of this, IT-CMF is not a rigid, one-size-fits-all framework, but uses the flexibility of design patterns to allow an organization to effectively codify, adopt and share those practices that are most appropriate for them and are most likely to improve their overall performance.

The concept and use of design patterns originated in building architecture in the late 1970s, and were later adopted in software engineering and other disciplines as a way of dealing with recurring challenges. A design pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice²⁹. Design patterns describe general reusable solutions and templates for dealing consistently and reliably with commonly occurring problems. The patterns are such that they can be applied in many different situations.

The various elements in IT-CMF are design patterns that can be combined in myriad ways: each organization can identify the patterns (critical capabilities, capability building blocks, practices, metrics, artefacts, etc.) that best address their particular needs, objectives and environment, and will enable them to deliver agility, innovation and value. Recognizing that each organization is different, the framework avoids an overly prescriptive approach, and instead provides guidance on good practice while enabling each organization to overcome its contextual challenges flexibly.

Maturity frameworks are conceptual models that outline anticipated, typical, logical, and desired evolution paths towards desired end-states ³⁰, where maturity is an evolutionary progress in the demonstration of a specific ability or in the accomplishment of a target from an initial to a desired or normally occurring end stage³¹. Maturity-based approaches for managing IT have been widely adopted — for example, the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is extensively used in the domain of software quality^{19 20}.

For each of the capabilities in the framework, IT-CMF defines five maturity levels, each of which characterizes a different level of efficiency and effectiveness. This facilitates a modular, systematic and incremental approach to capability improvement, by helping organizations to gauge how advanced they are in each area of activity, and identifying the actions they can take to improve over time.

While the definition of maturity levels is specific to each capability, the broad common characteristics of the five maturity levels, in terms of approaches, scope, and outcomes, are as shown in Table 1. (These are examples only — a wide diversity of maturity pillars is supported throughout IT-CMF.)

1Initial

Approaches

Approaches are inadequate and unstable.

Scope

Scope is limited to a partial area of a business function or domain area; deficiencies remain.

Outcomes

Repeatable outcomes are rare.

2Basic

Approaches

Approaches are defined, but inconsistencies remain.

Scope

Scope is limited to a partial area of a business function or domain area; deficiencies remain.

Outcomes

Repeatable outcomes are achieved occasionally.

3Intermediate

Approaches

Approaches are standardized, inconsistencies are addressed.

Scope

Scope expands to cover a business function (typically IT) or domain area.

Outcomes

Repeatable outcomes are often achieved.

4Advanced

Approaches

Approaches can systematically flex for innovative adaptations.

Scope

Scope covers the end-to-end organization / neighbouring domain areas.

Outcomes

Repeatable outcomes are very often achieved.

5Optimizing

Approaches

Approaches demonstrate world-class attributes.

Scope

Scope extends beyond the borders of the organization / neighbouring domains.

Outcomes

Repeatable outcomes are virtually always achieved.

IT-CMF is structured around four Macro Capabilities, each of which embraces a number of Critical Capabilities (CCs) that can contribute to agility, innovation and value.

Each critical capability is made up of a number of Capability Building Blocks (CBBs). The framework defines the different maturity levels for each CBB, and provides evaluation questions to assess their current state.

For each CBB, IT-CMF provides a series of representative practices to drive maturity, along with the outcomes that can be expected from implementing them and the metrics that can be applied to monitor progress (Practices-Outcomes-Metrics, or POMs).

The framework looks at typical challenges that the organization might face in attempting to develop maturity in each capability, and suggests actions to overcome them. And it identifies additional management artefacts that can be used in the development of maturity.

These elements are all described below.

At the top level, IT-CMF is structured around four key strategic areas, or macro-capabilities, for the management of IT³²:

• Managing IT Like a Business
• Managing the IT Budget
• Managing the IT Capability
• Managing IT for Business Value

The effective management of technology within an organization focuses on these four macro-capabilites, all of which should be aligned with the overall business strategy, the business environment within which the organization operates, and the IT posture of the organization.

Managing IT Like a Business

To optimize the contribution of technology to the organization as a whole, the IT function needs to be managed using professional business practices. This involves shifting the focus away from technology as an end in itself towards the customers and the business problems to which IT can provide solutions. The Managing IT Like a Business macro-capability provides a structure within which the IT function can be repositioned from a cost centre to a value centre.

Managing the IT Budget

There are many challenges associated with managing the IT budget, including, for example, unplanned cost escalation, the cost of maintaining legacy systems, and management reluctance to invest strategically in new technologies. The Managing the IT Budget macro-capability looks at the practices and tools that can be used to establish and control a sustainable economic funding model for IT services and solutions.

Managing the IT Capability

The IT function was traditionally seen as the provider of one-off IT services and solutions. In order to fulfil its role as the instigator of innovation and continual business improvement however, the IT function has to proactively deliver — and be seen to deliver — a stream of new and improved IT services and solutions. The Managing the IT Capability macro-capability provides a systematic approach to adopting that role, by effectively and efficiently maintaining existing services and solutions and developing new ones.

Managing IT for Business Value

Investments in IT must be linked to overall business benefits. This means that the investments should not be viewed simply as technology projects, but as projects that generate business value and innovation across the organization. The Managing IT for Business Value macro-capability provides a structure within which the IT function provides the rationale for investment in IT and measures the business benefits accruing from it.

Together these four macro-capabilities operate in a continuous feedback loop to optimize the way in which IT is managed³².

• Managing IT like a Business sets the direction for the overall IT capability.
• In Managing the IT Budget, the strategic direction is translated into an IT budget to fuel activities and programmes.
• Managing the IT Capability is the production engine, where two primary activities are performed: maintaining existing IT services and developing new IT solutions.
• Managing IT for Business Value ensures that these activities and programmes deliver value.

Performance is fed back into Managing IT like a Business, to validate that the IT budget is being converted effectively into business value. This may result in tactical or strategic adjustments that feed through the cycle again³³. (See Figure 2.)

The macro-capability feedback loop in IT-CMF ensures that the organization continually focuses on the IT capabilities needed to meet the challenges and opportunities presented by the changing business and operating environment.

Macro-Capability Strategies

When an organization is planning its capability improvement programme, it is helpful to decide on its strategic objectives in relation to each of the four macro-capabilities of IT-CMF, as depicted in Figure 3. This will help to identify the critical capabilities that the organization needs to focus on. Other factors that must be taken into account include IT posture, problem context, industry trends, business strategy, business context, and so on. (For further discussion of this topic, seem^{14 32}.)

IT-CMF's four macro-capabilities encompass a modular library of 35 critical capabilities (adapted³³) — see Figure 4. Critical capabilities are key management domains that need to be considered by an organization when planning and delivering IT-enabled business value and innovation.

The Overview provides the contextual background for each Critical Capability (CC), outlining the following in each case:

Goal

The general purpose or end-state towards which the CC is directed.

Objectives

Specifics regarding what the CC provides or enables. These provide the focus and the direction for the capability improvement effort.

Value

How the effective management of this CC can contribute towards the organization's pursuit of business value — that is, what it delivers in a business context.

Relevance

The importance of the CC in a business context.

The Scope defines the area that the CC deals with, in each case providing:

Definition

A formal definition of the CC, its primary subject matter and the activities that it covers.

Other Capabilities

Activities that might be expected in this CC, but are covered in other CCs.

This section describes the different levels of maturity associated with the Critical Capability (CC). It takes in a number of areas as described below.

Recognizing Excellence

This is a brief description of what performance in the CC might look like when it is operating well, and how good performance can be recognized. The main characteristics of high performance are summarized here.

Maturity at the Critical Capability (CC) Level

This provides a top-level summary of the CC across five successive and incremental levels of maturity. It describes the essential characteristics of the CC at each level. In doing so, it presents a picture of the transition from one maturity level to the next.

Maturity at the Capability Building Block (CBB) Level

This section describes the capability building blocks (CBBs) — the key components of the CC that enable its goals and objectives to be achieved efficiently and effectively. These are grouped into higher-order logical categories that are particular to each CC. For each CBB, there is a brief description of what it does, and an outline of the five progressive levels through which it passes as it matures. CBBs serve as the basis (the building blocks) upon which the CC's maturity is developed.

How to Interpret Maturity Levels

The maturity levels described in the CCs and the CBBs are generally applicable in different contexts, but an individual organization may find that it does not fit neatly within any one level — it may, for example, exhibit characteristics of two or more maturity levels. Deciding which maturity level best describes the organization's current state depends on taking a common-sense approach that considers where the majority of the organization's time, resources and effort are being spent.

The maturity levels summarize the main characteristics that are generally observed at each level, but, for reasons of practicality, not all characteristics may be described.

Maturity levels are additive — each lower level provides the foundation for the next higher one, and capabilities are progressively enhanced in progressing from one level to the next. It can thus be unwise (and may not be possible) to skip levels — for example, to attempt to progress from 1 directly to 5. With proper planning, however, progress through the levels can be accelerated.

The maturity level that an organization should aim for depends on many factors, such as the organization's IT posture, business strategy, industry environment, current maturity, and so on. It may be unrealistic or inappropriate for every organization to automatically aim for 5 in every capability.

This section encourages the reader to reflect on their own organization's level of maturity in relation to the CC, and suggests some representative practices that might help them to develop.

Capability Evaluation

This consists of some high-level questions that help the reader to determine their current and desired maturity levels in relation to the CC. Each question has associated with it a series of corresponding maturity statements from which the organization selects the one that most closely matches their situation. In conjunction with the CBB maturity descriptions, these questions and answers can inform improvement planning discussions and help drive improvement across the areas under investigation.

Practices-Outcomes-Metrics (POMs)

This is a series of representative practices at each maturity level that an organization might adopt to help it stabilize its current maturity or progress to the next level of maturity. Each practice is accompanied by an outcome that states what benefits might result from following the practice, and one or more metrics against which the organization can gauge whether or not it has been successful in its efforts. The practices listed are indicative or representative, and are not exhaustive or mandatory — depending on organizational circumstances, alternative practices may yield the same results. Each organization should select the POMs that are most appropriate to their maturity circumstances and on which time, resources, and effort can be expended to maximum effect.

While the POMs are each described in association with a particular maturity level, this should not be seen as exclusive — it may be appropriate for an organization to implement, to a limited extent, POMs that are beyond its current maturity level. The key is to understand which POMs should command the majority of the organization's time, effort and focus in pursuit of capability improvement.

As with maturity levels, POMs are cumulative, in that lower-level POMs provide the foundation for adopting and succeeding with higher-level POMs.

Addressing Typical Challenges

This deals with general organizational challenges that may arise in attempting to develop maturity in the CC. For each challenge, there is a brief description of the context in which it is likely to occur, and a statement of the action that needs to be taken to meet or overcome the challenge.

Management Artefacts

These are artefacts that management might use to develop maturity in the CC. Although artefacts can be useful in more than one CC, in many cases they tend to be CC-specific. They include a range of tools, templates, documents, software applications, and other tools that have the potential to help practitioners develop their organization's capability.

There is a reference section at the end of each CC chapter as described below.

See Also

Capabilities are very often interdependent, and can rarely be improved in isolation. The maturity of the current CC may be constrained by the level of maturity in other CCs that have close and important relationships with it. When designing a capability improvement programme, the organizational context needs to be taken into account, and the related capabilities that are critical in that context identified. The CCs listed in the See Also section are the most likely candidates for consideration, but others should also be considered, depending on the organization's problem context and desired objectives.

Further Reading

This is a bibliography of material that relates directly to the current CC.

Notes

This is a list of published items referenced in the text of the chapter.