Maturity Models

For the ECMM development we have followed an iterative approach that includes state of the art analysis and requirements elicitation, ECMM design and development and ECMM application into COIN end-users.

The first iteration has been finished and the results obtained are:

State of the art analysis and ECMM requirements: One of the major challenges while defining the scope of the Enterprise Collaboration Maturity Model has been to determine and establish which domains, vital to collaborative and interoperable environments, need to be covered. Other maturity models, like CMMI, focus on measuring and assessing the business processes, whereas they do not strive to measure and assess business strategies and business models. In the case of ECMM, since Enterprise Collaboration and Enterprise Interoperability are not only influenced by Business Processes but they are also tightly connected to Business Models and Business Strategies, it is clear that these aspects need to be treated.

However, the ECMM requirements have been elicited using different resources. The first step in the requirements elicitation has been the distinction among the different types of possible requisites, like for example: General Requirements, Collaboration Requirements and Interoperability Requirements. Furthermore, potential users of collaboration networks have also been selected to provide their needs, experience and vision about the issue of measuring, and assessing organizations in order to evaluate their preparedness for collaboration.

ECMM Design and development: After making a depth analysis of the COIN end-users’ answers based on multiple requirements and the vision of other maturity models and European projects, it was decided to design the ECMM consisting of four maturity levels and seven domains.


A set of process areas was proposed according to different types of collaboration, next it is presented a brief description of each of the process areas that were selected:

• Business Management (BM): BM plans and manages the business and financial aspects of a CNO.
• Collaboration Agreement (CA): The purpose of CA is to set up the terms in which the collaboration within the CNO takes place as well as the management of this collaboration throughout the whole life of a CNO.
• Collaborative Project Management (CPM): The purpose of CPM is to establish and manage the project and the involvement of the relevant stakeholders.
• Configuration Management (CM): The purpose of CM is to establish and maintain the integrity of work products using configuration identification, configuration control, configuration status accounting, and configuration audits.
• IPR: The purpose of IPR is to clarify and agree the terms of the Intellectual Property Rights within the CNO.
• Measurement and Analysis (MA): The purpose of MA is to develop and sustain a measurement capability of the CNO that is used to support management information needs.
• Process and Product Assurance (PPA): PPA provides appropriate conformance guidance and objectively reviews the activities and work products of work efforts within the CNO to ensure they comply with applicable laws, regulations, standards, organizational policies, business rules, process descriptions, and work procedures.
• Requirements Management (REQM): The purpose of REQM is to manage the requirements of the project’s products and product components and to identify inconsistencies between those requirements and the project’s plans and work products.
• Resource Management (RM): RM plans and manages the acquisition, allocation, and reassignment of people and other resources needed to prepare, deploy, operate, and support the CNO’s products and services.
• Trust Management (TM): The purpose of TM is to promote the establishment of trust relationships among CNO participants, including the assessment of the trust level among members and between members and the CNO as a whole.
• Business Governance (BG): BG establishes executive accountability for the management and performance of the CNO’s work and results.
• Collaborative Business Process (CBP): The purpose of CBP is to establish and maintain a usable set of collaborative business process assets and work environment standards.
• Collaborative Customer Relationship Management (CCRM): The purpose of CCRM is to manage the interaction of potential or actual customers with the CNO
• Defect and Problem Prevention (DPP): DPP identifies and addresses the causes of defects and other problems that are the primary obstacles to achieving a CNO’s plans and quantitative improvement goals so these defects and problems do not recur.
• Organizational Innovation (OI): The purpose of OI is to select and deploy incremental and innovative improvements that measurably improve the CNO’s processes and technologies.
• Requirements development (RD): The purpose of RD is to produce and analyze customer, product and product component requirements.
• Risk Management (RSKM): The purpose of RSKM is to identify potential problems before they occur so that risk-handling activities can be planned and invoked as needed across the life of the CNO, product or project to mitigate adverse impacts on achieving objectives.
• Interoperability and Collaboration Technologies (ICT): The purpose of ICT is to standardize the usage of a set of baseline tools, techniques and methods for interoperability and collaboration
• Technical Solution (TS): The purpose of TS is to design, develop, and implement solutions to the committed requirements.
• Customer Evaluation (CE): The purpose CE is to measure the customers’ satisfaction regarding the delivered products and services and to set up a set of indicators internal to the CNO w.r.t. the customers.
• Open Innovation (OPI): Systematically explore a wide range of internal and external sources for innovation opportunities, integrate and exploit those opportunities through multiple channels
• Organizational Process Performance (OPP): The purpose of OPP is to establish and maintain a quantitative understanding of the performance of the CNO’s set of standard processes in support of quality and process-performance objectives, and to provide the process-performance data, baselines, and models to quantitatively manage the CNO's projects.
• Quantitative Project Management (QPM): The purpose of QPM is to quantitatively manage the project’s defined process to achieve the project’s established quality and process-performance objectives.
• Training and Competency Development (TCD): Competency Development develops the competencies within the CNO’s workforce that are needed to perform the organization’s work using the organization’s standard processes. The purpose of Training is to develop the skills and knowledge of people so they can perform their roles effectively and efficiently.