1. MATURING ORGANIZATIONS,
CONVERGING TECHNOLOGIES
by
Dimitris Kosmidis
A thesis submitted in partial
fulfilment of the requirements for
Technoscope
National Technical University of
Athens – Athens University of
Economics and Business – National
School of Public Health, Athens
2003
Approved by Emm. Koukios _______________________________________
Chairperson of Supervisory Committee
N. Tsounis _________________________________________
I. Katsoulakos ______________________________________
A. Bartzokas _______________________________________
Program Entitled
to Offer Advanced Studies Diploma in Technology Management, -
part of the European Master in “Society, Science and Technology”_________
Date 18th
of April, 2003 ___________________________________________

2. National Technical University of
Athens – Athens University of
Economics and Business –
National School of Public Health,
Athens
Abstract
MATURING ORGANIZATIONS,
CONVERGING TECHNOLOGIES
by Dimitris Kosmidis
Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee:Professor Emm. Koukios
Department of Chemical Engineering, -Bioresource Technology Unit,
NTUA
Evolving Corporate Procedures, Adapting Contemporary IT Solutions,
Building Socio-Cultural Welfare.
An Architectural Concept snapshot, through the prism of the
Human Resources Department of INTRACOM SA

3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents.................................................................................................. i
Acknowledgments ...............................................................................................ii
Glossary ..............................................................................................................iii
Chapter 1.............................................................................................................. 1
Preface.................................................................................................................. 1
Chapter 2.............................................................................................................. 3
The Business Framework.................................................................................... 3
1 The Need for Application Integration........................................................... 3
1.1 The Application Integration Environment....................................... 3
1.2 The Post Internet Boom and .com Bubble Situation ....................... 4
2 The Economic Aspect ................................................................................... 5
2.1 Funding ............................................................................................. 6
Chapter 3.............................................................................................................. 7
The Technology Issue.......................................................................................... 7
3 Revising all Technical Issues........................................................................ 7
3.1 Business and Application Integration Delivery............................... 8
3.2 Communication Protocols ................................................................ 9
3.3 Grid Computing.............................................................................. 10
3.4 OLTP............................................................................................... 10
3.5 OLAP, Data Mining and Knowledge Warehouses........................ 10
4 SAP.............................................................................................................. 11
4.1 SAP Human Resources Solution.................................................... 11
4.2 SAP Human Resources Key Capabilities ...................................... 12
Chapter 4............................................................................................................ 13
The Environmental Aspect................................................................................ 13
5 The People Capability Maturity Model
(People-CMM
) ....................... 13
5.1 Organizational Maturity and Maturity Levels ............................... 13
5.2 P-CMM Process Areas and Process Area Threads........................ 14
5.3 The Overall Architecture................................................................ 14
6 Sustainability............................................................................................... 15
Chapter 5............................................................................................................ 16
Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 16
Links...................................................................................................................... i
Bibliography ........................................................................................................ii

4. ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRACOM ΑΕ is the largest provider of telecommunication, information
and defense electronic systems in Greece.
SAP AG, Systems Applications Products in Data Processing.
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and
development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and
operated by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

People Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM) is registered in the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office. SAP, the SAP logo and all other SAP
products and services are trademarks of SAP AG. Any other product or
service name mentioned herein is trademark of its respective owner.
Special thanks to the ones provided valuable input, guidance and support.

5. iii
GLOSSARY1
Abilities. Abilities are enduring attributes of an individual that influence
performance.
API. Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface that
applications use to offer web or other services and to communicate with
each other.
B2B, B2C, B2E B2G. Business to Business, Business to Consumer,
Business to Employee, Business to Government
BAPI
. Business Application Programming Interface
(BAPI
) is an
open, stable, object-oriented interface, through which capabilities of
mySAP.com can be accessed.
BCA. Business Case Analysis
BI. Business Intelligence is a broad field containing technologies as
Decision Support Systems (DSS), Executive Information Systems (EIS),
On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP), Relational OLAP, Multi-
Dimensional OLAP, Hybrid OLAP or combinations. BI can be broken
down to, Multi-dimensional Analysis Tools, Query Tools, Data Mining
Tools and Data Visualization Tools.
BPR. Business Process Re-engineering (Redesign)
Business Process. Business Process is the execution of one or several
services in a controlled way, driven by one or several individuals or events.
BPML. Business Process Modeling Language
CBA. Cost Benefit Analysis
Competence. Competence is the ability to acquire, use, develop and share
knowledge, skills and experiences.
CORBA. Common Object Request Broker Architecture
1
Definitions and formulas outlined herein with the only intention to facilitate reading comprehension
of the document. They are not meant to substitute original meaning of terms or complete scientific
definitions in no case, nor whatsoever.

6. iv
CRM. Customer Relationship Management
Data. Data is factual information with no specific meaning, used for
analysis and reasoning purposes.
Data Mart. Data Mart is a database that provides the data needed by a
centralized function in the organization.
Data Mining. Data Mining is a process of discovering and interpreting
previously unknown patterns in data. Data Mining leverages artificial
intelligence and statistical techniques to build models, -from situations
where the outcome is well known.
DCOM. Distributed Component Object Model
Deep Computing. Deep Computing is the application of computational
methods to large data sets, to solve business decision problems.
DW. Data Warehouse is a centralized repository of all the data relevant to
all subjects in which business users are interested.
Enterprise Portal. Enterprise Portal is a single point of entry to all
information, applications and services that people need to do their jobs
according to their roles. Enterprise Portals provide a way for suppliers,
customers, partners and employees to access all relevant content easily and
securely and to participate in all types of business processes.
ERP. Enterprise Resource Planning
Experience. Experience relates to previous activities; explicitly linked to
certain types of work activities.
FTE. Full Time Equivalent is the process cycle requirements, -resources,
for a specific job task to be completed.
FTP. File Transfer Protocol
HTML. Hyper Text Markup Language
HTTP. Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
ICT. Information and Communication Technologies
Info Cubes. Info Cubes are logical groupings to hold data and allow for
data aggregation.

7. v
Information. Information is a collection of facts or data, with a specific
meaning when they are properly interpreted.
IRR. Internal Rate of Return is the discount rate that makes the NPV of an
investment zero.
0 = initial Outlay + (Cash Flow Year 1/IRR1
) + (Cash Flow Year 1/IRR2
) + (Cash Flow
Year 1/RRn
)
Knowledge. Knowledge is organized sets of principles and facts that apply
to a wide range of situations.
NPV. Net Present Value is the difference between an investment’s market
value and its cost; -acceptable for an investment decision is considered
only a positive NPV. NPV is calculated by the present value of the future
cash flows and then subtracting the costs.
NPV = -Initial Investment + Future Net Cash Flows / (1 + required Return) Time
OLAP. On-line Analytical Processing enables users to easily and
selectively extract and view data from different points of view. To
facilitate this kind of analysis, OLAP data is stored in multidimensional
databases.
OLTP. On-Line Transactional Processing
OOP. Object Oriented Programming
Payback Period. Payback Period is the amount of time required for an
investment to generate cash flows sufficient to recover its initial cost, or
the elapsed time before the initial cost is equaled by the financial payoffs, -
delimited on a chart projection by the break-even point.
P-CMM
. The People Capability Maturity Model
(People-CMM
)
PLM. Product Life-cycle Management
ROI. Return on Investment is an estimate of the financial benefit (Return)
on money spent (Investment) on a particular alternative.
RPC. Remote Procedure Call
SCM. Supply Chain Management
SEM. Strategic Enterprise Management

8. vi
Skills. Skills are developed capacities that facilitate learning and the
performance of activities that occur across jobs.
SMTP. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an open protocol for exchanging
electronic mail.
SOAP. Simple Object Access Protocol is a lightweight protocol for
exchanging information in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is an
XML-based protocol that is typically used with HTTP. SOAP includes
conventions to represent method calls of objects or function calls and their
respective responses, as well as conventions to represent standardized data
types.
SSL. Secure Sockets Layer is a standard protocol for transmitting secure
messages over the Internet using public-key and private-key encryption.
SWOT Analysis. Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats Analysis
TCO. Total Cost of Ownership is an attempt oriented towards the
comprehensive and quantitative capture, of expenditures related to
technology decisions. To the IT the community, this includes the total cost
of acquiring / developing, installing, implementing / integrating, using,
maintaining and replacing a system / IT solution across an extended period
of time, -most or all of its useful life.
TQM. Total Quality Management
UDDI. Universal Discovery Description and Integration is an industry
initiative to create a platform independent, open framework for describing
web services, discovering business, and integrating business services using
the Internet. Its purpose is to create an open registry.
UML. Unified Modeling Language is a tool, which helps to specify,
visualize, and document models of software or non-software systems,
including their structure and design.
XBRL. eXtensible Business Reporting Language is an open specification
that uses XML-based data tags to describe financial statements for both
public and private companies.
XML. eXtensible Markup Language is the universal format for structured
documents and data on the web; XML is increasingly becoming the
general standard document format of structured data.

9. 1
C h a p t e r 1
PREFACE
Computer systems or other said, information technology solutions
available to business, have been evolved, from the first generation large-
scale integration, post-processing mainframe systems of the early-70’s, to
down-sized, scalable real-time systems, featuring decentralized processing,
relational database and client-server architectures by the mid-80’s, utilizing
the available then PC and mini-computer technologies. Since the late-90’s,
we witness the on-going evolution of Internet and the accompanying N-tier
architecture, which integrates corporate-wide systems to numerous tailor-
made, and vertical industry solutions, implementing mission-critical
applications, through the facilitation of web computing over traditional
platforms. In our days there is an emerging need for the appearance of the
next generation Internet technology (Internet2), which is expected to
provide, extended scalability, robustness, security, flexibility, mobility,
openness and accessibility. The future is about fast broadband,
permanently connected solutions. It is about non-interrupted user access
from anywhere and at any time, -the utilization of existing network
facilities and the establishment of new ones, like wireless and mobile.
Intelligent infrastructure and deep computing is expected to interact with
natural, -rich media applications, ensuring seamless collaboration of
versatile technologies. Easy and trusted resources based on open, evolving
standards, will secure all commenced transactions and the privacy of
community members.
Through this past period, ICT has gradually evolved, spreading in a few
“twelve-year” cycles, from scientists and labs, to highly specialized staff in
large organizations and clean-room computing environments. Individuals, -

10. 2
the generation-X, with home entertainment stand-alone machinery, and
professional users with networked computers for business applications,
have now become communities of interest, -peer groups on the web. In the
afore-mentioned evolutionary process, technology has interacted
differently with society, -business and people. The urge to standardize the
technological framework, the ability to perceive existing ethics and define
new socially accepted boundaries under regulatory reforms arise in almost
every day’s activity. The environment where technological outcome turns
from gadget to commodity and side-affect turns to be a need is the same
environment that visualizes the innovative “next utility” of the era. On top
of that, well-established attributes and behaviors are passing phases of
redefinition, i.e. quality and utility. The option is simple and seems to lie
between expanding, -apply new technology and disseminate goods and
services for society to prosper, or decline and fade-out. Even further,
society’s response to non-defined, non-contextual, non-standardized and
non-conventional needs seems to lead technology! Typical examples are
coming from wide consumer industry sectors, like communications,
banking, health and insurance, where products and services are offered, -
produced “on demand”, but they are available “well in advance”. Plenty
other such cases exist, and though they are hard to identify in first place,
they contain the dynamics to attract remarkable magnitudes of resources,
like capital.
The spectrum of business, people and technology, expanding from the
“dedicated few” to a “holistic match” is outlined in this paper, through the
synthetic composition of a wide range of resources, methods and solutions.
The outcome balances the contents of a white paper and the thesis
requested, I hope.

11. 3
C h a p t e r 2
THE BUSINESS FRAMEWORK
Enterprise2
integration is to provide timely and accurate
exchange of consistent information between business
functions, to support strategic and tactical business goals,
in a manner that appears to be seamless [sei].
1 The Need for Application Integration
The need for organizations internally, to make their different applications
inter-work, is known as intra-business integration. Most lately, there is
increasing need for inter-business integration, -also known as B2B
integration, which is about different organizations having their own
applications inter-work across their traditional organizational boundaries,
often covering aspects of B2G and B2C.
1.1 The Application Integration Environment
Intra-business applications seem at first, as the most common target for
application integration. Someone could expect that for B2E applications, -
like formal Human Resources, service delivery would become simpler
“under one master”. Yet this is true, rarely much attention was put towards
such integration efforts in the past. Instead, “of-the-self” or “custom-built”
solutions, -most often systems originated form unplanned, stovepipe
“batch” and “single-tier” development, generated vicious sources of non-
synchronized data, multitudes of policies and business processes. Business-
2
The term “enterprise” can be ambiguous; it has been referred to variously at the level of a division,
a strategic business unit, a profit centre, a public sector agency, and a corporation. We refer to any
one of them in this document, as “organization”.

12. 4
workflows were treated erroneously in a discrete manner. Consequently,
there were increased needs for trust resources, -in the name of extended
data store and security. Such systems’ access and management needs,
ownership and authorization rights, -aspects described under the generic
term “usability”, tend to become increasingly complicated when made
available organizationally wide, -requiring multi-sign log-ins, increased
process and maintenance times etc. The need for an integrated and
automated cross-organizational flow of information is not questionable any
more, due to the fact that daily activities are performed in open,
competitive working environments and highly complex market places,
involving B2E, B2B, B2C, even B2G.
1.2 The Post Internet Boom and .com Bubble Situation
Although the Internet hype boom has faded away, the challenge of how to
conduct and drive business value from technology investments remains
critical. In order to grow and maintain the competitive advantage,
organizations need to be fast enough, flexible and efficient. Products and
services must be available and offered upon request. Needs must be
identified timely. Even more, they must automatically generate “ripple
effects”, -through the offering of eligible solutions, across various groups
of interest. The approach is summarized in today’s offering of highly
granular set of services over the Internet. The need of tight integration,
streamlined to business processes seems critical to success. Additionally,
everything must be done without losing sight of the core business, -from
top to bottom.
IBM’s on demand services “life event” model, built on the “life event”
concept, relates systems and services to the instance and flow of time. The
model shows the conjunction in between knowledge, infrastructure and
business processes. Implementation of solutions involving factors such as
information, transaction, interaction, -including scenario-based approaches

13. 5
and deep computing, exist on variable infrastructure and complexity value
bases. A typical initiative of such kind is outlined in the action plan for e-
Europe, showing the initial agreement and commitment of member states,
to offer an overall number of 20 basic public services, 12 addressed to
citizens and 8 to business. All these services shall be measurable through a
four-stage framework, -on-line posting of information, one-way
interaction, two-way interaction and fully on-line transactions, including
delivery and payment.
2 The Economic Aspect
Common practice, while introducing new technology solutions today, is
the conducting of BCA(s) or smaller scale CBA(s). High-level decision
support tools, named “value calculators”, -involving “key metrics” and
“indicators”, project the economic impact on the organization, prior to any
decision-making. They relate fixed or variable environmental attributes
“before”, “during” and “after” the phased introduction of enterprise-wide
software solutions, -covered under specific business scenarios. SWOT
analysis methodologies, examine past operations, analyze present
conditions and gather information about the future, from the operating
environment. Business drivers with direct affect to change, like benefit,
cost and various risk factors, are considered, in order to support the
preferred solution or any other existing alternative. They are all outlined in
technical and financial statements, and summarized in executive ones.
They are driven from models forming a common base to most traditional
industry sectors, like Porter’s Five Forces, namely, the Bargaining Power
of Suppliers, the Bargaining Power of Customers, the Threat of New
Entrants, the Threat of Substitutes and the Competitive Rivalry between
Existing Players.

14. 6
2.1 Funding
There are several aspects to consider before concluding to the preferred
alternative, in order to ensure a decision without inherited drawbacks.
Firstly, investments of large scale should clearly support the core / priority
mission functions of the organization. This includes compliance to existing
systems, methods and procedures or the absolute commitment of all
involved parties to the evolutionary process entailed to the adoption of
novel solutions, other said, appropriate BPR / TQM preparation and effort.
The projected ROI shall be clearly equal to, or better than existing systems
and resources, or of any other alternative. Pay-offs may be distinguished
into two major categories, tangible, -referring to the ones associated with
monetary savings, and intangible, -referring to pay-offs entailing a
significant value, which cannot be described with monetary terms. In order
to measure the financial benefits, the three key themes of any ROI analysis
shall be conducted; benefits determination, cost calculation and finally
formulation and summarizing of results. Benefits determination is
described as a breakdown procedure, necessary to measure process time, -
due to the streamlining of a business processes. It is calculated in FTE(s)
and involves detailed focus in major activities of the target organization.
Cost calculation is about estimating the TCO of specific business elements.
Some other aspects to consider, -for a feasible investment, include efforts
addressed towards securing the successful delivery of the solution,
minimizing any potential adverse consequences and the establishment of
clear measures and accountability for the undertaking introduction project.
An appropriate acquisition strategy will also consider, the available market
competition, a balanced contract payment and the reduction of possible
technological risks, -utilizing proven and well-established commercial
technology in most such cases.

15. 7
C h a p t e r 3
THE TECHNOLOGY ISSUE
Technology is the application of knowledge, to develop the
means our society requires to run, -a combination of
science, art, engineering, economics and social studies
brought together with creativity and ingenuity to improve
the quality of our lives. It is about making our world a
better place to live in […from the Technoscope 2003].
3 Revising all Technical Issues
Application Integration relates Requirements and Principles. Functional or
non-functional requirements, ought to be traceable to one or more business
drivers, while modeling organizational solutions, -i.e. UML, UDDI.
Business Integration is about design and modeling business processes,
taking proper TQM / BPR decisions. Presentation Integration incorporates
business knowledge to business logic, under business processes. It helps
organizations share resources among their main constituents; -these are
employees, customers, partners and suppliers. Data Integration deals with
the modeling and purposeful use of data. It is about normalizing and
validating data in first place, integrating them through controlled exchange
between internal applications and securing them with authorized access
from outside systems. Control Integration deals with how “message
exchange” is handled between applications, -based on the different modes
of communication protocols, -i.e. FTP, SMTP, HTTP, SOAP, etc.
Connectivity relates workflow, data and services, and how “bridges” and

16. 8
“gateways” conduct this. Finally there are Quality Attributes to consider, -
referring to architectural decisions influencing quality characteristics such
as performance, dependability and security (SSL).
3.1 Business and Application Integration Delivery
Business integration may be attained in numerous ways, mainly depending
on how business scenarios are implemented. On technical terms, this
means that organizational architecture forms essentially a planning activity,
rather than a development one. Replacing all existing legacy systems or
rewriting all business applications is the most obvious potential alternative
when the organization reaches a certain maturity stage, and when
technology can accommodate clearly defined needs, dismiss obsolete
requirements and over-ambiguous demands, unify business processes and
secure added value3
. The overall investment, the size of the new solution,
the adaptability to changing business needs and the culture of the
organization, comprise major issues to be considered, when faced with the
challenge to adopt business-wide solutions like the ones offered today
under the generic designation of ERP, CRM, SCM, etc. Leave “what
works” in place and provide “linkages” to these “already working parts”
through API(s), on the other hand, may be a viable approach, which is
usually not as simple to implement, as it seems in first place. It is common
tendency for the provided “middleware” to become increasingly
complicated, mostly depending on factors such as the nature of the solution
itself, the technology used by other legacy systems and the actual amount
of applications to be interconnected. Trying to assure information
integration, someone would propose to work towards numerous bi-
directional crossovers, a solution of doubtful delivered manageability and
functionality in real working-places. Following the approach of telephone
organizations, dispatching human operators acting as middleware for
3
Added value is meant not only in economic terms but also in any potential aspect indicating gain or
securing the competitive advantage, within the value chain of a product, service or solution.

17. 9
automated switches, (routing hubs), -when the volume of telephone lines
indicated the limitations of the existing system, software industry
implemented its own equivalent. Referred to as “message brokers”,
“integration brokers” or “application brokers”, such “hubs” enable
connections to be made between multiple systems and applications,
dramatically simplifying the equation, n (n - 1) of previously assumed bi-
directional connections required, -for each application connected to each
one of the rest, down to a manageable 2 n per application system
connected. The notion of intermediary working between two “master”
applications does not ensure successful service delivery on its own. IBM
discusses Five Axes for the successful application integration of such kind,
namely, Messaging, Transaction Processing, Process Management,
Development (or Creation of Application Integration and Production (or
the Operation of what has been Developed). It is worth emphasizing, that
after “broking”, “integration between applications” comes with the
process-flow automation. Process-flow automation involves business
people, -using revolutionary BPR strategies or evolutionary TQM
techniques, rather than IT specialists. The aspiration is that no technical
details are needed in order to integrate these applications.
3.2 Communication Protocols
It is important for today’s application development, -“procedural” OOP or
other, to ensure Internet communication. Application communication, is
facilitated through RPC(s) between objects like DCOM and CORBA,
representing a compatibility and security problem, -in other words traffic
which firewalls and proxy servers will normally intercept. HTTP is
commonly used for application communication; -since all Internet
browsers and servers support it. SOAP, has been especially designed to
communicate between applications running on different operating systems,
developed with different technologies and programming languages. Since

18. 10
HTTP is just about displaying information, SOAP messages are encoded in
XML.
3.3 Grid Computing
Grid computing can be defined as applying resources from many
computers on a network, -at the same time, to a single problem, usually a
problem that requires a large number of processing cycles or access to
large amounts of data. Through the utilization of grid technologies,
organizations can unite disparate technology capabilities to create a single
unified system, -enabling virtual sharing, management and access to
resources across an enterprise, industry or community. Grid computing
helps placing all necessary IT resources, to the disposal of the ones who
need it, at that very moment. When applied, grid solutions can help
organizations to break through infrastructure limitations, in order to solve
complex business problems like R&D, engineering, product design, and
financial analytics.
3.4 OLTP
On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) is the type of computer
processing, in which the computer immediately responds to user requests.
Each request is considered to be a transaction. OLTP forms major
architectural consideration and capability of computer systems today.
While OLTP requires interaction with a user, “batch” processing processes
large numbers of previously stored transactions, as whole, off-line.
3.5 OLAP, Data Mining and Knowledge Warehouses
3.5.1 Info Cubes and Data Marts
Info Cubes form the primary structure used in the implementation of a DW
or a Business Information Warehouse. Key numeric measures, called facts,
are stored in a central table, which have a number of characteristic
dimensions, -including time dimensions, unit dimensions and data packet
dimensions. Several different dimensions can be used to analyze facts, thus

19. 11
giving rise to the image of a cube. Info Cubes facilitate end-user creation
of ad-hock reports and queries, using advanced extraction, transformation
and loading techniques, and maximize system performance, because they
store and access data using relational databases and star-schema models
(multidimensional indexing)
4 SAP
In today’s knowledge-based economy, companies need to
fully leverage their human capital to sustain a competitive
position [sap -human capital management].
4.1 SAP Human Resources Solution
From a business analyst aspect, mySAP Human Resources is the
application component of mySAP.com ERP solution, addressed to Human
Resources Organizations. The HR solution comprises elements of:
Core Functions, containing the modules of:
Personnel Administration
Organizational Management
Time Management
Payroll
Legal and Compliance Reporting
Strategy, containing the modules of:
Organizational Development
Recruitment
Workforce Management
Training and Employee Development
Total Reward

20. 12
Analytics, containing the modules of:
Workforce Analysis
Strategic Alignment
Reporting and Benchmarking
Enabling Solutions, containing various modules such us:
Collaborative Business Networks
Employee Self-Service
Manager’s Desktop
Workplace and Business Portals
The ultimate goal of a portal is to deliver information; -that
is content [ovum]
4.2 SAP Human Resources Key Capabilities
Workforce operations, sourcing and deployment, workforce alignment,
business analytics, planning and services are key thematic areas covered
with the implementation of the full mySAP HR solution.
Employee life-cycle management handles any possible situation and event,
-from the beginning to the end of a relation between an individual and the
associated organization. Employee relationship management enables the
collaboration of the organization’s constituents, -through utilization of
technology and knowledge management. Workforce analytics offers the
tools necessary to monitor, analyze and optimize resources and business
practices, in order to secure the corporate strategy. Finally, employee
transaction management provides all the tools needed to support the
transactions and secure compliance to requirements.

21. 13
C h a p t e r 4
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECT4
The People Capability Maturity Model
(People-CMM
) is
a framework that helps organizations to successfully
address their critical people issues [sei].
5 The People Capability Maturity Model
(People-CMM
)
Organizations’ ability to compete is directly related to their ability to
attract, develop, motivate, organize and retain talented people. As a
roadmap for implementing workforce practices that continuously improve
the capabilities of an organization’s workforce, P-CMM draws on the
topics of capability maturity models, benchmark high performance
workforce practices and organizational improvement to increase
organization’s workforce capability5
.
5.1 Organizational Maturity and Maturity Levels
Initial – Managed – Defined – Predicable - Optimizing
As an organizational change model, P-CMM is designed on the premise
that improved workforce practices will not survive unless an organization’s
behavior changes to support them. The maturity framework is based on
three major domains; processes, practices -TQM / BPR and organizational
change.
4
People and society.
5
Workforce capability can be defined as the level of knowledge, skills, and process abilities
available for programming an organization’s business activities.

22. 14
Maturity levels in P-CMM represent organizational capability. Each one of
the five levels, entail different behavioral characteristics. From the Initial
level –maturity level 1, up to the Optimizing level –maturity level 5,
organizations deal initially with inconsistent management through
repeatable practices, and then people management through competence-
based practices. Later on, such practices get measured, empowered and
improved, in order to lead to highly capable and changing organizations.
5.2 P-CMM Process Areas and Process Area Threads
P-CMM maturity levels consist of several horizontal process areas, -
clusters of related practices, distinct between levels. When process areas
are performed collectively, they lead to enhanced workforce capability.
Process area threads, -are meant as four vertical areas, common between
the five maturity levels, which form the common ground for process
transformation and transparency.
5.3 The Overall Architecture
Maturity levels, (key) Process areas, Goals, (key) Practices
Trying to follow on how P-CMM components are structured, someone
could describe the following chain. Maturity levels, -indicating workforce
capability, contain process areas, -“key” functions achieving goals.
Process areas, are organized by common features, -process area threads
that address implementation efforts within the organization. These common
features contain key practices, which are describing the infrastructure and
the activities performed by the organization.
A practice cannot be improved if it cannot be repeated,
[Principles Underlying the Maturity Framework].
Certain organizational management factors interpret practices. It is the
organization’s ability to perform, -policy, the practices performed, -plans,

23. 15
measurement and analysis, and verification of the implementation. Once
again, there is a “life cycle” model in use, -the IDEAL model, a five-
phased approach, for driving continuous improvement in the organization.
It is based on the distinct phases following any stimulus for change,
namely Initiating, Diagnosing, Establishing, Acting and Learning An
additional sixth phase, -the overall task management, runs throughout the
span of the change process. The model is based on Shewart-Deming
improvement cycles of plan – do – check – act. The overall process
integrates with the Kaplan & Norton Balanced Scorecard.
6 Sustainability
Businesses in our days go far beyond the traditional workplace. “Social
Responsibility”, “Ethical Operations”, “Contribution to Society”, “Health
and Safety”, “Environmental Consciousness” are increasingly weighted
issues, affecting directly or indirectly a company’s existence and capacity
to operate in an ecosystem. Compliance to international standards, the
broader contribution to society, -through proper activities justified by the
needs and the nature of the business sector or the operating environment,
add value and goodwill to organizations. Providing opportunities, avoiding
exclusions and distributing wealth in a sensible manner are valuable efforts
headed towards the built of trust and stabilization of the operating
environment. They lead to a further reduction of instability, uncertainty
and risk; organizations are meant to deal with.

24. 16
C h a p t e r 5
CONCLUSION
Technology today offers the means to institutionalize procedures with
structural changes, -the technological breakthrough needed by the unified
collaborative environments we operate in, -business or other. It is a matter
of the inspiring vision, the value of the leading drivers, the clarity of the
strategies and the commitment to the roadmap of the evolving procedure,
which secure the desired deliverables. Deliverables meant to be addressed
to people, ensuring prosperity to society.

25. i
LINKS
http://europa.eu.int The European Union On-line
http://online.onetcenter.org/ Occupational Information Network O*NET
Online
http://www.hr.com/hrcom HR.com Human Resources Management
http://www.ibm.com International Business Machines Corporation
http://ww.ilo.org International Labour Organization
http://www.opm.gov U.S. Office of Personnel Management
http://www.ovum.com Ovum is the largest European headquartered
advisor on telecoms, software and IT services.
http://www.peoplesoft.com Peoplesoft
http://www.sap.com/solutions/hr mySAP Human Resources, Human
Capital Management (HCM) for Business
http://www.sei.cmu.edu Carnegie Mellon –Software Engineering Institute
http://www.w3.org World Wide Web Consortium

26. ii
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