A great deal has been written in the management literature concerning the field of knowledge management. Some of that literature has focused on the use of stories and storytelling, including for the sharing of knowledge. However, the field of knowledge management is relatively immature in South Africa. In particular within that field, there is not a clear understanding of the use of stories and storytelling for knowledge sharing within the country. The purpose of the study was to improve that understanding through research into a case study within the South African mining industry, with a focus on world-class performance. To assist in the performance evaluation of the case study organisation, a framework for world-class performance was developed and used as an analytical tool in conjunction with a research instrument that was based on the findings of the non-empirical research into the fields of knowledge management and stories and storytelling. The empirical research then focused on the activities of a particular community of practice within the case study organisation and sought to understand the way in which stories and storytelling were used to support the sharing of knowledge in the organisation, as a contributor to world-class performance. Whilst conducting the empirical research, assessment and analysis, it was identified that the case study organisation made use of a number of practices and tools to support the use of stories and storytelling, in particular graphical representations (storyboards) of the stories to complement their oral delivery. The analysis of the case study data indicated that a significant opportunity existed to improve the extent of world-class performance for the use of stories and storytelling and a number of recommendations were made in that regard. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Information Science / unrestricted

Western countries' information technology and software intensive firms are increasingly producing software and IT services in developing countries. With this swift advancement in offshoring, there are many issues that can be investigated which will enable companies to maximize their benefits from offshoring. However, significant challenges can occur throughout the lifecycle of offshoring IT service projects that turn the potential benefits into losses. This research investigated CMM/CMMI best practices and their effects on managing and mitigating critical issues associated with offshore development. Using a web based survey, data was collected from 451 Information Technology and software development firms in the US. The survey instrument was validated by an expert panel which included practitioners and researchers. The survey population consisted of Information Technology and software engineering managers who work on offshore IT and software development projects. Statistical methods including Chi Square and Cramer's V were used to test the research hypotheses. The results of the analysis show that IT companies applying CMM/CMMI models have fewer issues associated with IT offshoring. When US IT companies utilize and incorporate different practices from TSP and People CMM into CMMI for DEV/SVC and CMMI for ACQ, they have fewer offshoring issues related to language barriers and cultural differences. The results of this research contribute to the existing body of knowledge on the offshoring of IT services from the client management perspective and provide practitioners with increased knowledge regarding IT offshoring decisions.

by Ling Ho-Wan Howard, Ryoo Byung-Hoon. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-74). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iii / LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS --- p.vi / LIST OF TABLES --- p.vii / PREFACE --- p.viii / Chapter / Chapter I. --- IT PROFILE OF HONG KONG --- p.1 / IT Penetration in2002 --- p.1 / Government Initiatives --- p.2 / Software Industry of Hong Kong --- p.2 / Chapter II. --- IT STRATEGY --- p.5 / IT Strategy - 3 Check Points --- p.5 / Flexible Platform --- p.5 / Strategy vs. ROI --- p.8 / Outsourcing or Internal Development --- p.9 / Quality Management System ´ؤ Instituting Best Practices --- p.10 / Deming's 14 Points --- p.11 / The Juran Trilogy --- p.12 / Crosby's 14 Quality Steps --- p.13 / Chapter III. --- SOFTWARE QUALITY MANAGEMENT - CMM --- p.16 / Software Development Project --- p.16 / Software Project Process Model --- p.17 / Software Quality Management --- p.19 / Capability Maturity Model (CMM) --- p.20 / Bootstrap 3.2 --- p.23 / Trillium --- p.25 / ISO 9001/TickIT --- p.26 / SPICE --- p.27 / Chapter IV. --- CMM PRACTICES IN THE WORLD --- p.29 / The CMM Practices - Worldwide --- p.29 / Two studies on Software Process Management in Taiwan --- p.32 / Software Process Management in Taiwan: A Longitudinal Study of Top 1000 Companies --- p.32 / Software Project Process Management Maturity and Project Performance --- p.34 / Chapter V. --- SOFTWARE PROCESS MANAGEMENT IN HONG KONG --- p.36 / The CMM in Hong Kong --- p.37 / Case Studies on the SPM in Hong Kong --- p.41 / Case 1: Dow Chemical --- p.41 / Case 2: Oracle Hong Kong --- p.44 / Case 3: Bentley Systems Inc. (Hong Kong) --- p.48 / Case 4: i-Cable --- p.50 / Case 5: SinoPac Securities (Asia) Ltd --- p.53 / Implications of the Statistics --- p.55 / Factor comparison of mean value --- p.56 / Implications --- p.58 / Chapter VI. --- CONCLUSION --- p.60 / APPENDIX --- p.62 / BIBLOGRAPHY --- p.72

Risk management is a process through which organizations are methodically devoted to the risks associated with their activities in order to get the biggest benefit from their business. It is also a rapidly developing field, where there is a variety of different approaches, methods, methodologies and standards in which may be little confusing. Therefore, this work offers a comprehensive and systematic view on the issue of risk analysis and management. Risk analysis is a cornerstone for effective security management of each company used for identification, description and quantification of risks, which should lead to acceptance of suitable measures for risk treatment. That is the reason why it requires a careful and methodical procedure described in this work. The main objective of this work is to analyse different approaches to risk analysis and management and thus highlight the importance of information security and protection of corporate assets. This approaches need to be understood as a different levels of detail of conducted risk analysis which will depend on initial maturity level (according to the CMM -- Capability Maturity Model) of information security process. The theoretical part of this thesis will explain relevant methodologies, techniques and procedure of risk analysis based on the ISO 27005 standard. From this part reader should learn what risk analysis is, what is it used for, how can it be carried out and what standards and methods can be used. The practical part will solve a real risk analysis project, which will demonstrate application of information obtained in the theoretical part.

Turkish Land Forces Command uses information technology opportunities to satisfy its needs arising from the obligation for being a strong army. One of the main difficulties in using information technologies is the acquisition of these systems. This thesis reviews the fundamentals of software intensive systems acquisition process and then proposes a new model for Turkish Land Forces Command. Software acquisition process models are discussed and compared with each other. The current Turkish Land Forces Command acquisition process is studied to state the management, legal, resource, and industrial problems within the comtemporary models&amp / #8217 / perspective. The focus of this thesis study is proposing an acquisition model based on four international models, successes of which have been proven.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:37:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 KHAOHUN SHIA.pdf: 2242262 bytes, checksum: 97a46586e1ac55fd1097f77a932ad878 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-25 / In a competitive market of software, companies seek an agile development process with quality. Faced with this challenge, the companies target is a certification to prove the ability to produce a high quality product by following a defined process, for example, Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development (CMMI-DEV). To achieve this goal, the company hires experts to change the existing process, which represents a high cost for small and medium-sized businesses. The assumption in this work is to evaluate the possibility of using an agile methodology which adheres to CMMI-DEV. Feature Driven Development (FDD) was the agile methodology selected to assess their adherence to Project Planning area of CMMI-DEV. The evaluation of specific practices was automated by the multi-agent system with two ontologies. The first of them is the Ontology CMMI/FDD, which defines the concepts and the relationship of FDD with these specific practices. The second is the Ontology of Project Planning Document that defines the concepts used in sections of the Project Planning documents. The mapping between the specific practices and implementation was performed by intelligent mapping agents. The results obtained shown that it is possible to automate the process of evaluation of specific practices by the evidences in sections of the documents, reducing the costs involved in hiring a specialist of CMMI. The evaluation of Intelligent Agents of Specific Practices shown that the FDD partially attends to the specific practices, being necessary to change the two documents elaborated from the FDD Document (Project Plan and List of Functionality) and add three auxiliary documents (Risk Management, Data Management and Training Management) to meet all the specific practices of the Project Planning Area of the CMMI-DEV. / Em um mercado competitivo de desenvolvimento de software, as empresas buscam um processo ágil com qualidade. Diante desse desafio, procuram uma certificação para comprovar a capacidade de produzir com qualidade, seguindo um processo definido, por exemplo, o Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development (CMMI-DEV). Para atingir essa meta, a empresa contrata especialistas para alterar o processo existente, o que representa um alto custo para empresas de pequeno e médio porte. A hipótese neste trabalho é avaliar a possibilidade de utilizar uma metodologia ágil aderente ao CMMI-DEV. O Desenvolvimento Guiado por Funcionalidades (FDD) é a metodologia ágil selecionada para computar a sua aderência em relação à área de Planejamento de Projetos do CMMI-DEV. A avaliação das práticas específicas foi automatizada por um sistema multiagentes com duas ontologias. A primeira delas é a ontologia CMMI/FDD, que define os conceitos e a relação do FDD com essas práticas específicas. A segunda é a ontologia dos Documentos do Planejamento de Projeto, que define os conceitos utilizados nas seções dos documentos do Planejamento de Projeto. O mapeamento entre a prática específica e a implementação nas seções de documentação foi realizado pelos Agentes Inteligentes de Mapeamento. Os resultados obtidos mostram que é possível automatizar o processo de avaliação das práticas específicas, mostrando as evidências nas seções dos documentos, reduzindo os custos envolvidos na contratação de um especialista em CMMI. A avaliação dos Agentes Inteligentes de Práticas Específicas mostra que o FDD atende parcialmente às práticas específicas, sendo necessário alterar os dois documentos elaborados a partir do documento do FDD (Plano de Projeto e Lista de Funcionalidade) e adicionar três documentos auxiliares (Gestão de Risco, Gestão de Dados e Gestão de Treinamento) para satisfazer a todas as práticas específicas da área de Planejamento de Projeto.

The problem addressed in this study was the lack of understanding about failures of government leadership in accomplishing complex information technology (IT) projects and the ways such failures can negatively affect organizational performance. The purpose was to query subject matter experts and leaders with the intent to identify methods to reduce complex IT project failure rates in government organizations. This qualitative study drew on the technology acceptance model and the capability maturity model integration framework to evaluate organizations' abilities to manage complex IT projects. The research questions focused on exploring senior managers' experiences, the tacit knowledge of project management methodologies, and IT governance frameworks. The Delphi method was suitable for collecting and analyzing opinions of subject matter experts to help reach group consensus. Qualitative data analysis was used to identify themes, categories, and subcategories for thematic analysis. The result of the study was the identification of critical success factors and leadership attributes to increase the success rate of complex IT projects in federal agencies. This research may be beneficial to federal government program leaders who, as the result of increased insights and knowledge, can more effectively provide online government services using technology-enabled end-users' computing devices in a cost-effective and secure method.

To facilitate a better understanding of the social psychological factors that influence adoption of project management practices, this study draws upon the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) from social psychology, and the technology acceptance model (TAM) from information systems research. These models define and relate a number of belief constructs that predict the acceptance of technologies in a variety of settings. In general, the three models each have relatively consistent empirical support, with comparison studies showing mixed support for each of the models being the moderately "better" model. In the current study, the three models are thoroughly integrated using a latent constructs approach and structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques. Overall, constructs from TRA and TAM, but not TPB, predict the use of specific project estimating, plan development, and plan commitment practices defined in the Capability Maturity Models (CMM/I).

Background: The administrators, managers, and leaders of criminal justice organizations experience a plethora of processes that impact the strategic, tactical, and operational facets of their respective organizations. Sound processes are central to effectively and efficiently managing criminal justice organizations and for facilitating the optimal operations of the organization. Such management characteristics are necessary to render public services towards the goals of deterring crime and maintaining societal order. Administrating and managing criminal justice organizations involves paradigms that favor process improvement and quality of processes. Existing methods include the Compstat paradigm Total Quality Management, business process management, business process improvement, business process reengineering, standards, legislation, policy, and Six Sigma. However, such paradigms not approach process improvement from the unique perspective of process maturity as a foundational basis. Additionally, no solitary foundational basis exists that uniquely addresses organizational process improvement issues, regarding criminal justice entities, from the perspective of evolutionary process maturation through time. This research examines the potential of adapting the Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMi) as a foundational process improvement framework among criminal justice organizations. Within the CMMi framework, process improvement begins from a state of random, ad hoc processes and culminates in a state of highly optimized processes. Through time, process maturation occurs through five primary stages sequentially: 1) random, 2) managed, 3) defined/specific, 4) quantitatively managed, and 5) optimized. This research explores the potential of leveraging the CMMi paradigm as a form of organizational process improvement within the criminal justice domain. Scope of the Study: This research investigated the potential for adapting the Capability Maturity Model (Integrated) (CMMi) within the criminal justice domain. A derivative maturity model framework, the Criminal Justice Maturity Model (CJMM), was crafted using the CMMi concept as its foundational premise. A Likert scale survey was implemented to investigate the perceptions of personnel regarding process improvement initiatives and their work settings. This study was constrained to the criminal justice domains of the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Data processing encompassed demographic descriptions of the survey instrument and the received responses, ANOVA, Chi-Square analysis, and the Cronbach Method. Stratifications involved separating the survey responses into classifications of Alabama versus Mississippi entities, urban versus rural entities, and management versus non-management entities. Findings and Conclusions: The conclusions of this research failed to show that all five levels of the maturity model framework appear to be separately perceived among the respondents. Therefore, per each individual stage of the maturity model framework, this research failed to show conclusively that the complete maturity model framework is adaptable among administrative settings in the criminal justice domain and that process maturity issues among respondent settings are addressed via a process maturity framework. Because this research failed to show the perceived characteristics of all five maturity levels of the maturity model framework separately, it is concluded that the criminal justice administrative settings of the respondents do not conform completely to the tenets of the CMMi paradigm. Future studies were recommended to pursue additional approaches of this research project. This study represents an initial starting point from which several future endeavors may be initiated. / Criminology and Security Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Police Science)

Background: The administrators, managers, and leaders of criminal justice organizations experience a plethora of processes that impact the strategic, tactical, and operational facets of their respective organizations. Sound processes are central to effectively and efficiently managing criminal justice organizations and for facilitating the optimal operations of the organization. Such management characteristics are necessary to render public services towards the goals of deterring crime and maintaining societal order. Administrating and managing criminal justice organizations involves paradigms that favor process improvement and quality of processes. Existing methods include the Compstat paradigm Total Quality Management, business process management, business process improvement, business process reengineering, standards, legislation, policy, and Six Sigma. However, such paradigms not approach process improvement from the unique perspective of process maturity as a foundational basis. Additionally, no solitary foundational basis exists that uniquely addresses organizational process improvement issues, regarding criminal justice entities, from the perspective of evolutionary process maturation through time. This research examines the potential of adapting the Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMi) as a foundational process improvement framework among criminal justice organizations. Within the CMMi framework, process improvement begins from a state of random, ad hoc processes and culminates in a state of highly optimized processes. Through time, process maturation occurs through five primary stages sequentially: 1) random, 2) managed, 3) defined/specific, 4) quantitatively managed, and 5) optimized. This research explores the potential of leveraging the CMMi paradigm as a form of organizational process improvement within the criminal justice domain. Scope of the Study: This research investigated the potential for adapting the Capability Maturity Model (Integrated) (CMMi) within the criminal justice domain. A derivative maturity model framework, the Criminal Justice Maturity Model (CJMM), was crafted using the CMMi concept as its foundational premise. A Likert scale survey was implemented to investigate the perceptions of personnel regarding process improvement initiatives and their work settings. This study was constrained to the criminal justice domains of the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Data processing encompassed demographic descriptions of the survey instrument and the received responses, ANOVA, Chi-Square analysis, and the Cronbach Method. Stratifications involved separating the survey responses into classifications of Alabama versus Mississippi entities, urban versus rural entities, and management versus non-management entities. Findings and Conclusions: The conclusions of this research failed to show that all five levels of the maturity model framework appear to be separately perceived among the respondents. Therefore, per each individual stage of the maturity model framework, this research failed to show conclusively that the complete maturity model framework is adaptable among administrative settings in the criminal justice domain and that process maturity issues among respondent settings are addressed via a process maturity framework. Because this research failed to show the perceived characteristics of all five maturity levels of the maturity model framework separately, it is concluded that the criminal justice administrative settings of the respondents do not conform completely to the tenets of the CMMi paradigm. Future studies were recommended to pursue additional approaches of this research project. This study represents an initial starting point from which several future endeavors may be initiated. / Criminology and Security Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Police Science)