Orig­i­nal source pub­li­ca­tion: de Moura, F. L. and F. de Sá-Soares (2021). A Net­work Analy­sis of IT-CMF. Pro­ceed­ings of the 14^th IADIS Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems 2021—IADIS IS 2021, Vir­tual Con­fer­ence 77–88. IADIS Press, ISBN: 978-989-8704-27-6.
The final pub­li­ca­tion is avail­able here.

A Net­work Analy­sis of IT-CMF

Fábio Longo de Moura and Fil­ipe de Sá-Soares

Cen­tro ALGO­RITMI—Uni­ver­sity of Minho—Guimarães, Braga, Por­tu­gal

1. Introduction

Improv­ing busi­ness per­for­mance, or even main­tain­ing the com­pet­i­tive poten­tial, is a daily and con­stant chal­lenge for an enter­prise. To strength its posi­tion in the mar­ket, an orga­ni­za­tion needs to change cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics to a dif­fer­ent state while pre­serv­ing those char­ac­ter­is­tics that meet desir­able para­me­ters [Busi­ness Dic­tio­nary 2012]. This requires man­agers to make deci­sions from which a path to be fol­lowed by the orga­ni­za­tion towards defined goals should be derived. To best sup­port their deci­sions, man­agers need infor­ma­tion about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and alter­na­tive options. Thus, Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy (IST) play a cen­tral role in orga­ni­za­tions as fun­da­men­tal resources to syn­thetize infor­ma­tion.

Pep­pard and Ward [2004] iden­ti­fied three dif­fer­ent eras of evo­lu­tion for orga­ni­za­tions, con­cern­ing their exploita­tion of IST, namely Data Pro­cess­ing, Man­age­ment Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems, and Strate­gic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems. These ages pre­sented dif­fer­ent chal­lenges for the evo­lu­tion of orga­ni­za­tions, which influ­enced the devel­op­ment of dif­fer­ent evo­lu­tion mod­els and matu­rity mod­els. Such mod­els depicted sce­nar­ios that might be faced by orga­ni­za­tions and sug­gested paths for their evo­lu­tion con­cern­ing tech­nol­ogy, intend­ing to achieve suc­cess in dif­fer­ent aspects of the orga­ni­za­tion’s oper­at­ing envi­ron­ment. The increase in com­plex­ity inside and out­side orga­ni­za­tions, and in the amount of avail­able infor­ma­tion, led to an increased depen­dence of orga­ni­za­tions on IST, requir­ing orga­ni­za­tions to bet­ter man­age their infor­ma­tion-related resources.

To help orga­ni­za­tions respond to this infor­ma­tion man­age­ment chal­lenge, new evo­lu­tion mod­els and matu­rity mod­els that for­mu­late rela­tion­ships between IST and orga­ni­za­tions emerged. One of the lat­est mod­els is the Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Capa­bil­ity Matu­rity Frame­work (IT-CMF). The design of the IT-CMF reflects the demand for dif­fer­en­ti­ated ana­lyzes about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of improv­ing orga­ni­za­tions by the exploita­tion of IST. The frame­work indi­cates knowl­edge and skills that an orga­ni­za­tion should hold in order to man­age effi­ciently and effec­tively the orga­ni­za­tion’s IST func­tion [Duarte and Da Silva 2013]. Accord­ing to the pro­vi­sions of the IT-CMF [IVI 2016], it is pos­si­ble to carry out diag­nos­tic and in-depth analy­sis for each of the 36 man­age­ment areas that make up the frame­work. The frame­work also points out rela­tion­ships between man­age­ment areas and how improve­ments in one area may con­trib­ute to improve­ments in other areas.

The orga­ni­za­tion that wishes to evolve, based on new demands or on any fac­tor that influ­ences the alter­ation of any of its char­ac­ter­is­tics, should con­sider evo­lu­tion paths that may enhance cer­tain man­age­ment areas that make up the IT-CMF, with the prospect of ris­ing its busi­ness per­for­mance. How­ever, there may be alter­na­tive paths to choose from, tak­ing into account not only the objec­tives estab­lished for the areas of IT-CMF, but also con­sid­er­ing the rela­tion­ship between the areas. Given the inter­de­pen­dences between the 36 man­age­ment areas, orga­ni­za­tions may face a com­plex task iden­ti­fy­ing and mak­ing sense of dif­fer­ent evo­lu­tion paths. From this obser­va­tion stemmed the moti­va­tion to carry out this study. To facil­i­tate the selec­tion of evo­lu­tion paths by orga­ni­za­tions through bet­ter use of IST, we con­ducted a net­work analy­sis of IT-CMF. For this aim, we resort to graph the­ory to make explicit the inter­re­la­tion­ships, scope, and pos­si­bil­i­ties when pri­or­i­tiz­ing improve­ments in one or more areas of IST in an orga­ni­za­tion. Such a pro­posal also allows man­agers more clar­ity in deci­sion mak­ing, in addi­tion to greater assertive­ness and effi­ciency in the deploy­ment of resources for the evo­lu­tion of orga­ni­za­tions through IST.

The fol­low­ing sec­tion cov­ers the lit­er­a­ture review, set­ting the stage for a new way to apply IT-CMF accord­ing to the speci­fici­ties of each orga­ni­za­tion. After the lit­er­a­ture review, this work is com­posed of two other sec­tions, related to graph the­ory and the propo­si­tion of using IT-CMF and graph the­ory to improve the appli­ca­tion of orga­ni­za­tional resources, high­light­ing dif­fer­ent views about the rel­e­vance of each area cov­ered by IT-CMF. At the end of this paper, con­clu­sions are drawn and future work involv­ing the appli­ca­tion of this
pro­posal is advanced.

2. Literature Review

In this sec­tion, orga­ni­za­tional suc­cess and mea­sure­ment are dis­cussed, tak­ing into account the role that IST play both for that end and in that task. Then, evo­lu­tion and matu­rity mod­els for the exploita­tion and man­age­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion’s IST are briefly reviewed. After­wards, the struc­ture of IT-CMF and the rela­tion­ship between the areas com­pos­ing this frame­work are put into per­spec­tive.

2.1 Organizational Success

The avail­abil­ity of infor­ma­tion on a large scale does not guar­an­tees, by itself, the suc­cess of orga­ni­za­tions. The busi­ness prac­tices of orga­ni­za­tions must keep up with con­stant changes, as prac­tices that are known to be suc­cess­ful in the past may not indi­cate suc­cess in the future [Fong 2010], as illus­trated by what hap­pened to com­pa­nies with pre­dom­i­nant mar­ket share a few years ago, such as Kodak, Block­buster, and Black­Berry, that today no longer dom­i­nate the mar­ket, trans­muted into a dif­fer­ent busi­ness or just dis­ap­peared.

The mea­sure­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion’s suc­cess should not be sta­tic and should not be based on sim­plis­tic and iso­lated mea­sures. A tool widely used to mea­sure the suc­cess of orga­ni­za­tions is the Bal­anced Score­card (BSC) [Kaplan and Nor­ton 1992]. BSC aims to over­come weak­nesses of indi­ca­tors such as Return Over Invest­ment (ROI) and Earn­ing Per Share (EPS), not­ing that these are not suf­fi­cient indi­ca­tors for con­tin­u­ous improve­ment and inno­va­tion, fac­tors which are nec­es­sary for the sur­vival of the orga­ni­za­tion in the envi­ron­ment in which it oper­ates. The BSC authors advo­cate the inte­gra­tion of com­ple­men­tary indi­ca­tors to assist in the eval­u­a­tion of the suc­cess of the orga­ni­za­tion, tak­ing into account the cus­tomer per­spec­tive, inter­nal busi­ness processes per­spec­tive, learn­ing and growth per­spec­tive, and the finan­cial per­spec­tive.

The suc­cess of an orga­ni­za­tion depends on its sus­tain­abil­ity and growth, requir­ing the orches­tra­tion of very dif­fer­ent tasks, such as seg­ment iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mar­ket niche, devel­op­ment of prod­ucts and ser­vices, acqui­si­tion of resources, devel­op­ment of oper­at­ing sys­tems, devel­op­ment of man­age­ment sys­tems, and devel­op­ment of the cor­po­rate cul­ture [Flamholtz and Akse­hirli 2000]. In order to obtain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, an enter­prise needs to align resources with the busi­ness strat­egy [Khani et al. 2011].

Whether for the pur­pose of mea­sur­ing the level of suc­cess, which in itself has become more demand­ing since it has to con­sider a mul­ti­tude of para­me­ters [Cur­ley 2008], as instru­ments to know what is hap­pen­ing or as prod­ucts or ser­vices by them­selves, IST are a fun­da­men­tal part of and for the suc­cess of orga­ni­za­tions. It is there­fore easy to under­stand the emer­gence of mod­els to guide the exploita­tion and man­age­ment of orga­ni­za­tions’ IST.

2.2 Evolution and Maturity Models

Through changes in the char­ac­ter­is­tics of orga­ni­za­tions, which occurred over sev­eral decades, the con­cepts of evo­lu­tion and matu­rity were adopted in order to envi­sion the progress of the orga­ni­za­tion and its matu­rity regard­ing the use of IST. Com­mon to most mod­els of evo­lu­tion and matu­rity, designed to guide orga­ni­za­tions to obtain greater sup­port in busi­ness processes from IST, sev­eral fac­tors were used to mea­sure the cur­rent state of orga­ni­za­tions and to indi­cate aspects to improve, based on con­cepts, such as, infor­ma­tion sys­tems plan­ning, strate­gic plan­ning of infor­ma­tion sys­tems, orga­ni­za­tional learn­ing, infor­ma­tion sys­tems man­age­ment, align­ment of IST with the busi­ness, and user involve­ment [Gal­liers and Suther­land 1991; Hirschheim et al. 1988; McFar­lan et al. 1983].

The fac­tors that help to assess the evo­lu­tion­ary stage of orga­ni­za­tions, regard­ing their IST, are usu­ally called vari­ables, and should guide orga­ni­za­tions to answer the fol­low­ing ques­tions: Where are we? Where are we going? What will we do to get there? [San­tos and Valdesuso 1985].

Although dif­fer­ent con­cepts are employed in dif­fer­ent mod­els, the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence between evo­lu­tion mod­els and matu­rity mod­els con­cerns the sup­port given to the actions to be devel­oped, in the search for a bet­ter rela­tion­ship between orga­ni­za­tions and IST [Rocha and Vas­con­ce­los 2004]. Hence, matu­rity mod­els may offer greater sup­port to man­agers regard­ing the desired improve­ments, in com­par­i­son to the sim­pli­fied archi­tec­ture of the evo­lu­tion mod­els, which limit them­selves to present char­ac­ter­is­tics of sit­u­a­tions expe­ri­enced by orga­ni­za­tions and fail­ing to sug­gest actions to be taken for improve­ment of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

Given the increase in com­plex­ity, regard­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of evo­lu­tion and matu­rity of orga­ni­za­tions, pro­pos­ing direc­tions that unveil evo­lu­tion­ary paths for the orga­ni­za­tion becomes chal­leng­ing. The scope of most of the mod­els designed so far has become lim­ited due to the numer­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties pro­vided by the use of IST. Ergo, there is a need for a holis­tic approach to extract value from IST, that pays atten­tion to dif­fer­ent sec­tors of the orga­ni­za­tion, their spe­cific demands and rela­tion­ships, mak­ing explicit the influ­ences and depen­den­cies exist­ing between them.

2.3 IT-CMF

Based on the var­i­ous sci­en­tific con­tri­bu­tions con­ceived over decades of stud­ies on the rela­tion­ship between orga­ni­za­tions and IST, the IT-CMF appears as a com­pos­ite of matu­rity mod­els, not lim­ited to ana­lyz­ing a spe­cific con­text. The frame­work archi­tec­ture includes 36 con­texts for analy­sis, each with a matu­rity model that indi­cates a pos­si­ble path to be taken by the orga­ni­za­tion that seeks to improve its rela­tion­ship with IST in a man­age­ment area, in an attempt to do more for less, con­cern­ing finan­cial invest­ments made in IST [Car­cary et al. 2015]. Each IT-CMF matu­rity model is com­posed of five evo­lu­tion­ary stages, and the areas cov­ered by the frame­work have guid­ing ques­tions to assess the level of matu­rity, guide­lines for the
evo­lu­tion of the area, typ­i­cal chal­lenges for the intended evo­lu­tion, as well as actions nec­es­sary to be per­formed by those respon­si­ble for the evo­lu­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion. The areas, called Crit­i­cal Capa­bil­i­ties (CC), are orga­nized into four large groups, called Macro Capa­bil­i­ties (MC). These groups bring together areas that have equiv­a­lent objec­tives, which accord­ing to the pro­vi­sions of IVI [2016], are:

• Man­ag­ing IT like a busi­ness (MC1): Com­posed of 14 CCs, it pro­poses to change the vision of how IT is con­sid­ered, migrat­ing from a cost cen­ter to a value cen­ter view, offer­ing solu­tions to cus­tomers and exist­ing prob­lems in the busi­ness;

• Man­ag­ing the IT bud­get (MC2): Formed by 4 CCs, it includes chal­lenges related to the cost of IT, such as unplanned costs, main­te­nance of legacy sys­tems, and the dif­fi­culty of strate­gi­cally invest­ing in new tech­nolo­gies;

• Man­ag­ing the IT capa­bil­ity (MC3): It cov­ers 15 CCs and refers to the main­te­nance of the ser­vices pro­vided by the IT func­tion and the devel­op­ment of new ser­vices, stim­u­lat­ing inno­va­tion in the orga­ni­za­tional envi­ron­ment through ser­vices and solu­tions pro­vided by IT; and

• Man­ag­ing IT for busi­ness value (MC4): It involves 3 CCs, which aim to ensure that IT invest­ments will enable busi­ness ben­e­fits, fos­ter­ing the view that IT projects are not tech­nol­ogy projects, but projects that gen­er­ate busi­ness value.

The­o­ries and prac­tices pro­posed by sev­eral of the matu­rity and evo­lu­tion mod­els known until the con­cep­tion of the IT-CMF in 2016 were incor­po­rated in this frame­work. The process of diag­nos­ing the nec­es­sary improve­ments for the orga­ni­za­tion, which is also included in the frame­work archi­tec­ture, will indi­cate a set of CCs that should be improved, accord­ing to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion and its busi­ness objec­tives.

Through the diag­no­sis of the orga­ni­za­tional sce­nario, in line with what the frame­work sug­gests, the ben­e­fits from the improve­ment actions applied to a sin­gle CC or a group of CCs may con­trib­ute to sev­eral areas of the orga­ni­za­tion. Ana­lyz­ing the rela­tion­ships between the CCs, con­tri­bu­tions to the improve­ment of sev­eral CCs are observed, which may be the result of iso­lated actions, but with com­pre­hen­sive results. The rela­tion­ships between the 36 CCs that make up the IT-CMF involve 230 con­tri­bu­tions, either between CCs from the same MC or between CCs from other MCs, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Con­tri­bu­tions between IT-CMF MCs

Con­sid­er­ing the sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of rela­tion­ships exist­ing between the CCs, the pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of CCs on the path to be fol­lowed for the improve­ment of the areas of the orga­ni­za­tion becomes com­plex. There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to under­stand bet­ter such rela­tion­ships, specif­i­cally regard­ing the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided and received by each CC, in order to assist man­agers on the selec­tion of the best evo­lu­tion­ary path to be fol­lowed. This argu­ment is related to the pur­pose of IT-CMF, to do more with less, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to add value to the busi­ness through assertive invest­ment in IST.

Accord­ing to the data pro­vided in Table 1, the rel­e­vance of MC1 is patent, both in the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided by the CCs that com­pose it and in the con­tri­bu­tions received by their CCs. On the other hand, there is a lower weight of the CCs of MC2, regard­ing the con­tri­bu­tion to the other CCs, as well as the con­tri­bu­tions received by the CCs that make up MC4. To enable a bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the CCs, visu­ally indi­cat­ing the exist­ing rela­tion­ships between them, mak­ing clear their con­tri­bu­tion to improve­ment actions, we resort to graph the­ory, using rep­re­sen­ta­tions as well as apply­ing algo­rithms on the data com­piled from IT-CMF. The appli­ca­tion of algo­rithms enables the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of com­mu­ni­ties of CCs that show greater prox­im­ity, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of CCs with greater rel­e­vance in the frame­work, either in gen­eral or in the con­tri­bu­tions received or pro­vided, as well as show­ing the affected CCs through the improve­ments made in a sin­gle CC. The rep­re­sen­ta­tions were made using soft­ware Gephi (ver­sion 0.9.2).

3. Graph Theory

Graph the­ory is a branch of math­e­mat­ics con­cerned with the study of struc­tures–graphs–that model rela­tion­ships between objects. A graph is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion formed by a set of points (ver­tices) and con­nec­tions between points (edges), which can be used to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions in the real world [Bondy and Murty 1976]. The his­tory of graph the­ory began in 1736, in the famous dilemma of the Königs­berg bridges. In this dilemma, the seven bridges (edges) and four regions (nodes) of the city of Königs­berg were involved, which were cut by the river Pregel [Gold­barg and Gold­barg 2012]. Fig­ure 1, devel­oped by Rouse Ball [Gross and Yellen 2003], exem­pli­fies the dilemma men­tioned when he called the con­cept of graph. This exam­ple came from the chal­lenge of the Königs­berg pop­u­la­tion, which was to walk through all regions of the city with­out cross­ing the same bridge more than once.

Fig­ure 1: Graph dia­gram of the Königs­berg bridges

One of the most used exam­ples for graphs is about rep­re­sent­ing peo­ple, with lines rep­re­sent­ing the rela­tion­ship between peo­ple, being able to demon­strate large con­cen­tra­tions and dis­place­ments on a map. Such a sce­nario is of great rel­e­vance for macro analy­sis and makes it pos­si­ble to obtain results regard­ing the spread of dis­eases in the world. A cur­rent case for analy­sis is the evo­lu­tion of the pan­demic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19). When trav­el­ing, peo­ple end up trans­port­ing the virus to their cities but pass­ing by large points of con­cen­tra­tion of peo­ple, such as large air­ports (hubs).

Regard­ing dis­place­ment, the the­ory of graphs can also be applied to chess games, with each piece hav­ing a spe­cific graph that indi­cates its dis­place­ment, cit­ing the Queen, for exam­ple. The Queen is the piece that has the great­est num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties in its dis­place­ment on the board and may have up to 8 pos­si­ble edges and sev­eral ver­tices for its final posi­tion on the board, as shown in Fig­ure 2. The queen is at the cen­ter of the graph, indi­cated by the non-empty point, hav­ing 25 ver­tices as the final posi­tion, depend­ing on whether there is an imped­i­ment to dis­place­ment, caused by any other piece of the board.

Fig­ure 2: Chess­board

These are just a few exam­ples of the use of graphs, from a myr­iad of appli­ca­tions in chem­istry, oper­a­tions research, social sci­ences, and com­puter sci­ence, to name a few. In this work, graphs will be used to rep­re­sent the CCs and MCs of IT-CMF, to clar­ify how CCs are related and how they can indi­cate paths for the evo­lu­tion of orga­ni­za­tions, regard­ing their rela­tion­ship with IST. The path to fol­low is based on the diag­no­sis of the improve­ments to be made, accord­ing to the objec­tives defined for the orga­ni­za­tion. In other words, the graph makes a clear sequence of actions related to the var­i­ous CCs that make up the IT-CMF, through the improve­ments iden­ti­fied as nec­es­sary to the orga­ni­za­tion. In addi­tion, it may indi­cate nec­es­sary paths to fol­low, that is, in the evo­lu­tion­ary path pro­posed for the orga­ni­za­tion, it might prove essen­tial to mobi­lize cer­tain resources in order to make fea­si­ble improve­ments in a spe­cific area of the orga­ni­za­tion.

4. ANALYZING THE IT-CMF WITH GRAPH THEORY

The use of the con­cept of graphs for this work was thought of as a means to facil­i­tate the under­stand­ing of the exist­ing rela­tion­ships between the areas addressed by IT-CMF, as set out in Table 1. Hence, it became pos­si­ble to ana­lyze all the CCs that make up the frame­work, as depicted in Fig­ure 3, as well as a sub­set of CCs, such as those that make up each MC, as shown in Fig­ure 4. In the fig­ures, CCs are iden­ti­fied by a numeral and an abbre­vi­a­tion in square brack­ets (the mean­ing of each abbre­vi­a­tion is pro­vided in Appen­dix A).

In both Fig­ures 3 and 4, CCs are arranged fol­low­ing the dis­tri­bu­tion pro­posed by the Force Atlas 2 algo­rithm, being dimen­sioned accord­ing to their degree (cor­re­spond­ing to the inputs and out­puts of each node–CC). The color of each node cor­re­sponds to the appli­ca­tion of the Heat Map, with an empha­sis on the CC with the high­est degree in the analy­sis per­formed, except for MC2. This excep­tion is because the CCs BOP(16) and FF(17) have the same degree, so the CCs are dimen­sioned by their cen­tral­ity, and the col­ors with the appli­ca­tion of the Heat Map are based in the CC with greater cen­tral­ity.

Fig­ure 3: IT-CMF Crit­i­cal Capa­bil­i­ties

Fig­ure 4: IT-CMF MCs and Their Respec­tive CCs

The graphs reveal that CC SP(14) has great rel­e­vance in the frame­work, as well as for the MC in which it is located. It is note­wor­thy that CCs SRP(28) and SD(29) also reflect an equiv­a­lent degree of impor­tance for MC, but in the global frame­work, they are less impor­tant. Con­cern­ing the con­tri­bu­tions between CCs, it is noted that CC CAM(19) does not co-par­tic­i­pate in the MC in which it is located, exer­cis­ing rela­tions in large part with the CCs of MC1 (7 CCs) and MC3 (1 CC). This fact strength­ens and clar­i­fies the essence of the frame­work, namely that the rela­tion­ships between dif­fer­ent sec­tors enable the orga­ni­za­tion to evolve. Thus, although CC CAM(19) works to raise the qual­ity of MC3, its improve­ment will also facil­i­tate improve­ments intended for MC1 and MC3.

Fig­ure 5 strength­ens this state­ment, pre­sent­ing another point of view on the IT-CMF CCs. In this fig­ure, the CCs are pre­sented in col­ors that rep­re­sent their com­mu­ni­ties, ren­der­ing the CCs that have the strongest rela­tion­ship. This result was obtained through the dis­tri­bu­tion using Force Atlas 2 algo­rithm and the cal­cu­la­tion of Mod­u­lar­ity (0.238). It is noted, there­fore, the exis­tence of dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties from the cor­re­spond­ing orga­ni­za­tion with the MCs (pre­sented in Fig­ure 6), empha­siz­ing again the argu­ment of IT-CMF that although each CC has a main objec­tive, lead­ing to clas­sify it in an MC accord­ing to its pur­pose, its evo­lu­tion may con­trib­ute to the improve­ment of another area of the orga­ni­za­tion.

Fig­ure 5: IT-CMF Empha­siz­ing the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of CC Com­mu­ni­ties

Fig­ure 6: Orga­ni­za­tion of CCs accord­ing to MCs

Another rep­re­sen­ta­tion derived from Fig­ure 5 and shown in Fig­ure 7 is to scale the nodes accord­ing to the degree value of each node, divid­ing it into two fig­ures, one to rep­re­sent the degree of the input and the other to rep­re­sent the degree of the out­put. This rep­re­sen­ta­tion is expected to con­trib­ute to the def­i­n­i­tion of paths to be fol­lowed to carry out activ­i­ties related to the CCs, con­sid­er­ing what should be pri­or­i­tized in an evo­lu­tion­ary path of the orga­ni­za­tion. Such an argu­ment con­sid­ers the fol­low­ing sce­nario: let us imag­ine that man­agers iden­tify as nec­es­sary to make improve­ments in CC BPM(03), belong­ing to MC1. Know­ing that BPM is part of a com­mu­nity (result­ing from the mod­u­lar­ity of the graph) whose main facil­i­ta­tors are CCs BP(02), CFP(04), and SP(14), it makes sense to con­sider the con­tri­bu­tions by these CCs, which will help to improve the orga­ni­za­tion’s BPM(03). It is note­wor­thy that CC BP(02) con­trib­utes directly to CC BPM and can assist in its evo­lu­tion. On the other hand, the con­tri­bu­tion pro­vided by BPM to the other CCs should also be con­sid­ered, regard­ing the rel­e­vance of these CCs to the orga­ni­za­tion. In this case, con­tri­bu­tions result­ing from improve­ments made in the con­text of BPM are directed to CCs ODP(10), SAI(12), SRC(13), EAM(20), and SD(29). If these CCs are also con­sid­ered rel­e­vant to the busi­ness, the impor­tance of using resources to improve BPM(03) is even greater. Another impor­tant insight is that CC EAM(20) has a high degree of out­put, con­tribut­ing to sev­eral other CCs, as shown in Fig­ure 7(B).

Fig­ure 7: Input and Out­put Degree Com­par­i­son of CCs

It is also rel­e­vant to con­sider that there are four MCs, as doc­u­mented in IT-CMF, coin­cid­ing with the num­ber of CC com­mu­ni­ties iden­ti­fied by cal­cu­lat­ing the graph’s mod­u­lar­ity. The sim­i­lar­i­ties observed through the rep­re­sen­ta­tion, shown in Fig­ure 6, cover the fact that MC2 and MC4 are prac­ti­cally united in one com­mu­nity, with only one CC of MC3 grouped in that com­mu­nity. In the other com­mu­ni­ties, all CCs cor­re­spond to MC1 and MC3, being well bal­anced in their divi­sion between com­mu­ni­ties.

Refer­ring to the rel­e­vance of MCs to the frame­work, it is evi­dent that MC1 and MC3, by effi­ciently and effec­tively employ­ing orga­ni­za­tional resources in the evo­lu­tion of their CCs, tend to enable a rad­i­cal change in the orga­ni­za­tion, result­ing from improve­ments in line with the objec­tives of CCs. How­ever, although MC2 and MC4 have sub­stan­tially fewer CCs, when employ­ing orga­ni­za­tional resources to improve these CCs, the con­tri­bu­tions to the other CCs in the frame­work are above the aver­age of the num­ber of con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided by the CCs of MC1 and MC3. Table 2, as a com­ple­ment to Table 1, shows the aver­age of con­tri­bu­tions per CC, tak­ing into account the num­ber of CCs in each MC.

Con­sid­er­ing the con­tri­bu­tions fea­tured in Table 2, one notes that the rela­tion­ship between the CCs of MC1 and MC3 are very strong, as well as the rela­tion­ships that exist inter­nally, that is, between the CCs of MC1 and MC3 them­selves. How­ever, when direct­ing the rela­tion­ship between these MCs and the other smaller MCs, the con­tri­bu­tion is much lower than the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided by the MCs com­posed of a lower num­ber of CCs. The weak­ness, nev­er­the­less, is part of the inter­nal rela­tions between the CCs, since, com­par­a­tively, the smaller MCs have, on aver­age, less inter­nal rela­tions than the most numer­ous MCs. There­fore, when defin­ing an IST improve­ment plan in an orga­ni­za­tion, it is nec­es­sary to visit the con­tri­bu­tions pro­vided by the smaller MCs, because at first, these MCs indi­cate that they have a more com­pre­hen­sive impact in the poten­tial results from the cor­rect use of orga­ni­za­tional resources. Being more spe­cific about this exam­ple, when con­sid­er­ing the CCs with the high­est degree in the graph, in MC2 and MC4, respec­tively PPP(18) and BAR(34) (see Fig­ure 4), and also because they are in the same com­mu­nity (see Fig­ure 5), it is advis­able that, even if such CCs are not pri­or­i­tized, the con­tri­bu­tion pro­vided by them is val­i­dated, based on what the orga­ni­za­tion wants to achieve and if, indi­rectly, the path to the objec­tive can­not be facil­i­tated.

Table 2: Aver­age Con­tri­bu­tions from CCs (Grouped by MCs)

To clar­ify the rela­tion­ships and con­tri­bu­tions exist­ing between the CCs of the MCs that make up the IT-CMF, Fig­ure 8 makes a com­par­i­son of the direct rela­tion­ship between the MCs. In Fig­ure 8(A), the thick­ness of the edges (the size of the edge arrow) con­veys, through the direc­tion of the arrow, the con­tri­bu­tion pro­vided from one MC to another. It can be noted, there­fore, the strength of the rela­tion­ship between MC1 and MC3, as pre­vi­ously men­tioned, in addi­tion to also demon­strat­ing the con­nec­tiv­ity of the CCs that make up MC1 and MC3 (as revealed by the self-loops). Fig­ure 8(B) depicts the total con­tri­bu­tions divided by the num­ber of CCs that make up the MC. In this rep­re­sen­ta­tion, it is evi­dent that, in all rela­tion­ships, MC2 and MC4 pro­vide more con­tri­bu­tions to MC1 and MC3 than receive con­tri­bu­tions from these MCs, mak­ing clear the need to pro­vide atten­tion to MC2–Man­ag­ing the IT Bud­get and MC4–Man­ag­ing IT for Busi­ness Value, even though, quan­ti­ta­tively, they are less expres­sive than the other MCs. The CCs that makeup MC2 and MC4 can act as great facil­i­ta­tors for improve­ments to be per­formed in dif­fer­ent areas of man­age­ment of the orga­ni­za­tion.

Fig­ure 8: Rela­tions and Con­tri­bu­tions between MCs and CCs

5. Conclusion

In the face of a chal­lenge, it is nec­es­sary to act. To act, the action must be well-founded, that is, be based on ele­ments that sup­port that the action per­formed was iden­ti­fied as the best option for the given moment. The deci­sion for a path to be fol­lowed to make improve­ments in the orga­ni­za­tion needs to be as assertive as pos­si­ble, as many orga­ni­za­tions have no mar­gin for errors, or, even if errors are part of the evo­lu­tion­ary path that the orga­ni­za­tion takes, they are never desir­able. The pro­posal to use graphs as an aid to find the evo­lu­tion­ary paths for the orga­ni­za­tion, which are adapted to its needs, seeks to max­i­mize the use of orga­ni­za­tional resources in the adop­tion and use of IT-CMF.

Con­sid­er­ing that IT-CMF is one of the most robust and mature ref­er­ences in the eval­u­a­tion of the rela­tion­ship between orga­ni­za­tions and IST, it is of great rel­e­vance to explore it, to present dif­fer­ent points of view for its appli­ca­tion, seek­ing to facil­i­tate the immer­sion of man­agers in the con­tent pro­vided. By con­duct­ing a net­work analy­sis of IT-CMF based on graph the­ory, it is pos­si­ble to demon­strate, with greater clar­ity, how the man­age­ment areas that make up IT-CMF are related, as well as reveal­ing the paths that can be cov­ered by the orga­ni­za­tion, in order to improve its use of IST. The pos­si­bil­i­ties for com­bin­ing the graph con­cept with the frame­work are numer­ous, and it is believed that suf­fi­cient guide­lines have been pro­vided in this paper to sug­gest how man­agers can build the best roadmap to be fol­lowed, deploy­ing orga­ni­za­tional resources as effi­ciently and effec­tively as pos­si­ble, focus­ing on the cre­ation of aggre­gate value to the busi­ness by using IST. For future work, we con­sider the appli­ca­tion of this pro­posal in dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions to be extremely rel­e­vant. This would assist in the val­i­da­tion of the pro­posal of using graph the­ory for plan­ning improve­ment actions to be car­ried out based on the IT-CMF.

Acknowlegments

This work has been sup­ported by FCT–Fun­dação para a Ciên­cia e Tec­nolo­gia within R&D Units Pro­ject Scope: UIDB/00319/2020.

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Appendix A—List of Critical Capabilities