Implementation Maturity Model Assessment - Example Case Study

Example Case Study

This section contains a fictive case study, written by the author of this entry, to illustrate the application of the IMM assessment. It involves an IT-organization named ManTech, which focuses on helping companies with implementation projects. Due to the growing competition between ManTech and other similar firms, the CEO of ManTech has decided to establish a group consisting of 3 managers that will help him assess the organization’s current way of implementation. In order to find out on which level they are with their implementation processes, they have decided to use the IMM to guide their assessment.

To come up with relevant values to insert into the matrix, they needed to decompose their implementation processes into the five implementation factors and nineteen IMM-elements and valuate them. By carrying out interviews with employees and project managers and investigating documents of previous projects or those in progress, they had to determine the properties of all nineteen elements that are applicable to ManTech.

From the analysis, the following things were found:

• most, if not all, projects comprised two phases: planning and execution
• there was no standardized way of writing reports after each project
• the tools used to support project activities vary per project
• developing implementation strategies involves the project itself closely
• the management of the implementation projects remain within each project and are not applicable to other projects
• the stakeholders are only involved with the implementation during the actual usage of the software implemented
• when project teams are needed, people are simple selected based on their availability and not on their specific knowledge and skills
• estimations are supported with statistical data per project
• statistical data (metrics) are calculated for individual projects for each deliverable
• communication often only takes place within the project teams
• applied methods vary per project
• implementation factors are valuated separately
• to guide the projects, formal roles are appointed to employees
• people of the organization are very reluctant to adapt to changes within the organization

Unfortunately, due to the lack of documentation, the managers were not able to find all the needed information to valuate all IMM-elements. However, the CEO decided that they should nevertheless insert the values into the matrix, which turned out like Figure 3 below. The elements that they could not valuate are grayed out.

Just when the CEO wanted to derive the overall maturity from the matrix, one of the managers suddenly reminded him of the dependencies and checkpoints that needed to be considered. After some additional analysis, they found among others the following dependencies and checkpoints that might affect the maturity levels of the initial find (see Table 4).

Table 4: Dependencies and checkpoints – ManTech.

After taking this additional information into account, the new version of the matrix would look like in Figure 4.

Looking at this matrix, the CEO realized that improvements needed to be made if they had to compete with the other firms. The first step that they had to make towards this goal was to make sure that the grayed out elements can be and are analyzed. The second step was to improve the elements ‘implementation strategy’ and ‘communication channels’ so that they at least achieve level A. The dependencies and checkpoints they found would be able to help them decide on improvement actions.

For ‘implementation strategy’ to achieve level A, ‘valuating aspects’ needs to be analyzed first. For ‘communication channels’ to achieve level A, the way with which ManTech selects people to form project teams has to be improved first. They need to identify the specific skills and knowledge that each employee has so that the organization can at least group the right people with the right combination of skills in one team.