Orig­i­nal source pub­li­ca­tion: de Moura, F. L., F. de Sá-Soares, H. M. Kubis, I. Kawashita, J. S. Mota and N. Tak­agi (2021). IT-CMF and BPM Crit­i­cal Capa­bil­ity: Improv­ing Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab on Aca­d­e­mic Con­text. Pro­ceed­ings of the Con­fer­ence on Enter­prise Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems 2020—CEN­TERIS 2020, Vil­am­oura (Por­tu­gal).
The final pub­li­ca­tion is avail­able here.

IT-CMF and BPM Crit­i­cal Capa­bil­ity: Improv­ing Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab on Aca­d­e­mic Con­text

Fábio Longo de Moura,^b Fil­ipe de Sá-Soares,^b Heloisa Mar­cella Kubis,^a Ilka Kawashita,^b Joice Seleme Mota^a and Nil­ton Tak­agi^b

^a Insti­tuto Fed­eral Catari­nense, Araquari (SC), Brasil
^b Uni­ver­si­dade do Minho, Guimarães, Por­tu­gal

1. Introduction

Orga­ni­za­tions depend on the exis­tence of processes, as they are the basis of any busi­ness, whether they are prop­erly man­aged or not. Process devel­op­ment may be achieved by stan­dard­iz­ing man­age­ment processes through the adop­tion of best prac­tices and use of appro­pri­ate frame­works and stan­dards [vom Brocke and Rose­mann 2019]. Suc­cess­ful process evo­lu­tion pre­serves the qual­ity stan­dards of prod­ucts and ser­vices and aggre­gates value to the orga­ni­za­tion.

Busi­ness Process Man­age­ment (BPM) is a dis­ci­plined approach that aims at the opti­miza­tion of busi­ness processes by apply­ing sev­eral tech­niques and tools. The chal­lenge is to reduce the busi­ness processes man­age­ment waste and fos­ter the tech­no­log­i­cal sin­gu­lar­ity described by Vinge [Vinge 1993].

This paper reports a case study con­ducted at a Higher Edu­ca­tion Insti­tu­tion Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab (“Lab”), whose senior man­age­ment intended to diag­nose and improve the Lab’s inter­nal processes. The Lab mis­sion is to bring the acad­emy closer to the busi­ness con­text, adding real-world expe­ri­ences to stu­dents to help their inte­gra­tion in the mar­ket­place.

In order to assist the Lab’s senior man­age­ment in devel­op­ing inter­nal processes, this work applied the prac­tices rec­om­mended by the Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Capa­bil­ity Matu­rity Frame­work (IT-CMF) [IVI 2016]. IT-CMF is a frame­work that helps orga­ni­za­tions add value through invest­ments in Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy (IT). The frame­work is struc­tured in 36 areas, called Crit­i­cal Capa­bil­i­ties (CCs), which involve the orga­ni­za­tion’s Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy (IST) pro­fes­sion­als. The option for this frame­work is jus­ti­fied by the IT envi­ron­ment in which the Lab oper­ates and by the fact that IT-CMF includes a CC specif­i­cally ded­i­cated to BPM.

Data col­lected from top man­age­ment allowed the assess­ment of the Lab at a matu­rity level in the con­text of BPM. The data was orga­nized accord­ing to the diag­nos­tic mech­a­nism pro­posed by IT-CMF. The find­ings of the study were pre­sented to the Lab’s man­age­ment, together with action pro­pos­als for the devel­op­ment of the Lab’s processes, involv­ing the adop­tion of tech­nolo­gies and man­age­ment tools.

This paper is struc­tured as fol­lows. Sec­tion 2 presents the the­o­ret­i­cal foun­da­tion of the study with a brief review of the fun­da­men­tal con­cepts. Sec­tion 3 presents the con­text of the insti­tu­tion and the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab, where the research was con­ducted. Sec­tion 4 describes the applied method­ol­ogy, high­light­ing the steps applied to the case study. In Sec­tion 5, the results with the list of pro­posed actions are pre­sented. Finally, in Sec­tion 6, we draw our con­clu­sions and pro­pose future work.

2. Theoretical Foundation

2.1 Business Processes and Maturity

A busi­ness process broad def­i­n­i­tion can address the what, where, when, why, and how work is done and who is respon­si­ble for doing it [ABPMP 2013]. In order to increase the effi­ciency and effec­tive­ness of the orga­ni­za­tion, atten­tion must be paid to processes. Their improve­ment is made pos­si­ble through process map­ping [vom Brocke and Rose­mann 2019]. Map­ping and mak­ing processes avail­able facil­i­tate trans­parency in activ­i­ties. It allows iden­ti­fy­ing those involved in each step, real­iz­ing the scope of the process, and find­ing sit­u­a­tions where costs can be reduced.

The Capa­bil­ity Matu­rity Model Inte­gra­tion (CMMI) [SEI 2010] is a cor­ner­stone of staged matu­rity mod­els adopted in Soft­ware Engi­neer­ing. The model was orig­i­nally devel­oped to assess the matu­rity of soft­ware devel­op­ment processes and is based on the con­cept of imma­ture and mature soft­ware orga­ni­za­tions [Rose­mann and de Bruin 2005]. Another ini­tia­tive that con­tem­plates the con­cept of matu­rity is the Busi­ness Process Matu­rity Model (BPMM), which serves as a mech­a­nism to assess the matu­rity of processes. BPMM pro­vides guide­lines for processes con­tin­u­ous improve­ment, pro­mot­ing com­pli­ance, and reduc­ing rework [Lee et al. 2007]. In the con­text of project man­age­ment matu­rity, the Pro­ject Man­age­ment Insti­tute (PMI) offers the Orga­ni­za­tional Pro­ject Man­age­ment Matu­rity Model (OPM3) [PMI 2013].

2.2 IT-CMF

Regard­ing IST matu­rity mod­els, it is worth not­ing the rel­e­vance of IT-CMF. It pro­vides an inte­grated approach within 36 dif­fer­ent areas of the orga­ni­za­tion–the CCs–in which IST pro­fes­sion­als can oper­ate to add value to the busi­ness [IVI 2016]. The frame­work aims to meet man­agers’ expec­ta­tions regard­ing IST finan­cial invest­ments. The evo­lu­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion is described in five lev­els of matu­rity, present in each of the CCs, which are grouped into four large groups, called Macro Capa­bil­i­ties. The goal of IT-CMF is to address the chal­lenges faced in opti­miz­ing busi­ness value through the appli­ca­tion of IST [Car­cary et al. 2015]. The four main ben­e­fits of using IT-CMF are the fol­low­ing: busi­ness focused on value, not on cost; IT bud­get aimed at sus­tain­abil­ity; focus on opti­mized value, instead on the value gen­er­ated by cost; and IT con­sid­ered as an orga­ni­za­tional core com­pe­tence [Doherty et al. 2013].

The IT-CMF is fre­quently updated by the Inno­va­tion Value Insti­tute (IVI), so it is kept rel­e­vant to the mar­ket­place needs. The advan­tage of using the IT-CMF refers to what its authors refer to as exist­ing rela­tion­ships between the CCs, such that improve­ment actions applied in one CC may ben­e­fit other CCs. In essence, IT-CMF presents itself as a holis­tic frame­work, which helps Chief-Infor­ma­tion Offi­cers and deci­sion-mak­ers improve the matu­rity of capa­bil­i­ties and direct respon­si­bil­i­ties towards the nec­es­sary efforts to be made [Car­cary et al. 2015]. Each of the CCs has the same struc­ture, being com­posed of [IVI 2016]:

• Overview: pro­vides the con­tex­tual back­ground for each CC. It describes the CC goal, objec­tives, value, and rel­e­vance;

• Scope: relates to the for­mal def­i­n­i­tion of the area and activ­i­ties that the CC cov­ers;

• Inter­pret­ing Matu­rity Lev­els: assists in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of inter­me­di­ate sta­tus, that is, an evo­lu­tion in progress by the orga­ni­za­tion;

• Prac­tices-Out­comes-Met­rics (POMs): sug­gests best prac­tices for each matu­rity level of each CC. Prac­tices can be applied to main­tain the cur­rent matu­rity level or to evolve to the next level. Each POMs points out the ben­e­fits of the prac­tices appli­ca­tion and met­rics to ver­ify the results of the efforts.

2.3 Business Process Management (BPM) in IT-CMF

Among the CCs com­pos­ing IT-CMF is Busi­ness Process Man­age­ment. BPM refers to the abil­ity to per­form process doc­u­men­ta­tion and also assist in the exe­cu­tion of new or exist­ing processes [IVI 2016]. It is a man­age­ment dis­ci­pline focused on end-to-end processes, includ­ing, among oth­ers, orga­ni­za­tional struc­tures, roles, and poli­cies. It aims to estab­lish the gov­er­nance of processes, inte­grat­ing ele­ments in such a way that the orga­ni­za­tion has a unique view of its inter­nal and exter­nal envi­ron­ments and oper­a­tions. Thus, BPM offers a clear view of the influ­ence of these ele­ments in the orga­ni­za­tion’s busi­ness processes [ABPMP 2013]. BPM includes meth­ods, tech­niques, and tools to sup­port the design, enact­ment, man­age­ment, and analy­sis of oper­a­tional busi­ness processes [van der Aalst et al. 2003]. IT-CMF defines the BPM CC with five dif­fer­ent lev­els of matu­rity for busi­ness process man­age­ment. Table 1 presents the matu­rity lev­els, with level 5 being the most mature level.

The Capa­bil­ity Build­ing Blocks (CBBs) present in each CC of the IT-CMF are used to clas­sify the orga­ni­za­tion in one of the matu­rity lev­els. They are divided into two cat­e­gories: Foun­da­tion and Imple­men­ta­tion. For the case of BPM CC, Foun­da­tion is com­posed of five CBBs that define how to estab­lish BPM and stim­u­late the devel­op­ment of stan­dards, meth­ods, mod­els, tech­nolo­gies, train­ing, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion approaches. Imple­men­ta­tion has six CBBs asso­ci­ated, which deter­mine and man­age how BPM will be put into prac­tice for the orga­ni­za­tion [IVI 2016]. These CBBs are:

• Foun­da­tion: (A1) Strat­egy and Lead­er­ship; (A2) Sup­port Orga­ni­za­tion and Per­son­nel; (A3) Stan­dards and Meth­ods; (A4) Tech­nolo­gies; (A5) Stake­holder Man­age­ment;

• Imple­men­ta­tion: (B1) Scope of Imple­men­ta­tion; (B2) Process Archi­tec­ture; (B3) Process Gov­er­nance; (B4) Process Improve­ment; (B5) Process Automa­tion; (B6) The IT Con­tri­bu­tion.

IT-CMF pro­poses two means to assess the matu­rity level. The more detailed is related to each CBB and offers a gen­eral clas­si­fi­ca­tion, which posi­tions the orga­ni­za­tion at a matu­rity level in a CC. After the diag­no­sis of the matu­rity level, the IT-CMF pro­vides guid­ance on the nec­es­sary actions to reach the next matu­rity level using POMs.

Table 1: Matu­rity lev­els—BPM Crit­i­cal Capa­bil­ity
Source: [IVI 2016]

3. Scenario

This study was con­ducted in the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab of a Higher Edu­ca­tion Insti­tu­tion that has 15 cam­puses. The selected cam­pus has approx­i­mately 2,000 stu­dents. The pro­grams in the tech­nol­ogy area involve approx­i­mately 450 stu­dents, divided into two higher edu­ca­tion pro­grams and one pro­fes­sional pro­gram. The Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab was cre­ated in 2014. One of its objec­tives is to allow stu­dents to expe­ri­ence the soft­ware devel­op­ment process, from require­ments gath­er­ing to the deliv­ery of the final prod­uct, through the exe­cu­tion of related activ­i­ties of research and exten­sion projects. Another objec­tive is to cre­ate and main­tain part­ner­ships with pri­vate and pub­lic com­pa­nies to fos­ter regional devel­op­ment. The Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab is not for profit. In prac­tice, the goal is to take the stu­dent closer to the daily lives of IST pro­fes­sion­als. Through part­ner­ships, it aims to cre­ate a greater com­mit­ment to deliver on dead­lines, solve prob­lems, man­age demands, pro­mote lead­er­ship, and man­age human and tech­no­log­i­cal resources. The Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab has already deliv­ered sev­eral solu­tions, both in terms of com­puter appli­ca­tions and data analy­sis for pub­lic and pri­vate ini­tia­tives. More than 200 stu­dents have par­tic­i­pated in the Lab’s projects, and the feed­back from the com­pa­nies that hired these stu­dents is pos­i­tive. The Lab is a suc­cess­ful case for the region and encour­ages the exe­cu­tion of research works like this one.

The Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab acknowl­edges that sev­eral processes could be improved. For exam­ple, some impor­tant processes lack doc­u­men­ta­tion. The evo­lu­tion of process man­age­ment could facil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion among Lab’s mem­bers and improve the under­stand­ing of the Lab oper­a­tion by new teach­ers and stu­dents. It would also pro­vide new ways of mea­sur­ing the work done by the Lab. Since the con­trol mech­a­nisms are infor­mal, mea­sur­ing the qual­ity of work is a chal­lenge. As the trans­parency of the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab processes improves, it will be pos­si­ble to define bet­ter per­for­mance indi­ca­tors, as well as to increase results’ effi­ciency and effec­tive­ness.

The IT-CMF frame­work aims to add value to the busi­ness through the cor­rect use of the avail­able IST, mak­ing the adop­tion of the frame­work appro­pri­ate to the present case, espe­cially with regard to the BPM CC. The next sec­tion describes how the frame­work was applied in this study.

4. Research Design

This work is cat­e­go­rized as a case study, involv­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the matu­rity level of the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab, accord­ing to the har­ac­ter­is­tics present in the matu­rity model for BPM pro­posed by IT-CMF. A case study is defined as an empir­i­cal analy­sis that stud­ies a fact and its cir­cum­stances [Yin 2003]. It is one of the most used meth­ods in the area of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems for stud­ies with a qual­i­ta­tive approach, which may involve an indi­vid­ual, a group of peo­ple, or an orga­ni­za­tion [Myers and Avi­son 2002]. This work adopts Yin’s [2003] approach, and is within what the author char­ac­ter­izes as a descrip­tive study. Stages with details about the actions per­formed are described below.

• Plan­ning: under­stand the def­i­n­i­tion of the method to be used at work, con­sid­er­ing the method’s strengths and weak­nesses. There­fore, the pos­si­bil­ity of devel­op­ing a descrip­tive case study using inter­views was iden­ti­fied;

• Con­cep­tion: list the pos­si­ble case stud­ies, as well as the pro­ce­dures to be per­formed. At this time, the objec­tives of the study and the stages for its exe­cu­tion were defined and sched­uled;

• Col­lec­tion: set the data col­lec­tion process. For this study, a semi-struc­tured inter­view was con­ducted with the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab coor­di­na­tor. The inter­view con­tained 11 ques­tions. Each ques­tion was related to one or more CBBs;

• Analy­sis: analy­sis of data and val­i­da­tion of the the­o­ries that com­prise the study. The data col­lected in the inter­view were com­piled accord­ing to the IT-CMF matu­rity model for BPM to clas­sify the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab into a matu­rity level;

• Dis­clo­sure: pre­sen­ta­tion of results to the study inter­ested par­ties. Indi­ca­tions that allow the tar­get audi­ence to reach their con­clu­sions on the sub­ject should be pro­vided. Before mak­ing results pub­lic, there was a pre­sen­ta­tion to the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab senior man­age­ment. It served to check both the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the matu­rity level, as well as the fea­si­bil­ity of car­ry­ing out improve­ment actions, accord­ing to IT-CMF frame­work guide­lines.

Table 2 presents the ques­tions devel­oped for the inter­view con­ducted at the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab. For each ques­tion, related CBBs are listed in the sec­ond col­umn.

Table 2: Inter­view Ques­tions and Related CBBs

5. Results

5.1 The Software Development Lab BPM Level of Maturity

The inter­view with the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab man­ager was the main resource for iden­ti­fy­ing the actual orga­ni­za­tion level of matu­rity con­cern­ing BPM. After the inter­view, it was pos­si­ble to diag­nose the actual or “As is” sce­nario of the stud­ied envi­ron­ment. Table 3 shows the CBBs with their clas­si­fi­ca­tion into the matu­rity level on a scale of 1-5. It also jus­ti­fies the indi­cated clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

Table 3: CBBs Matu­rity Lev­els and Jus­ti­fi­ca­tions

5.2 The Software Development Lab BPM Improvement Plan

The assess­ment of the Lab’s BPM matu­rity level was based on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of each matu­rity level pre­sented in the IT-CMF frame­work BPM CC. The results placed the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab at Level 1. The adop­tion of the POMs [IVI 2016] as guide­lines to raise the matu­rity level of the Lab envi­ron­ment led to the pro­posal of three actions to the man­age­ment team:

• Action 1: Eval­u­ate appro­pri­ate BPM tech­nolo­gies for the orga­ni­za­tion. Fol­low­ing this guid­ance, sev­eral solu­tion­swere iden­ti­fied. One of the tech­nolo­gies rec­om­mended is draw.io, which is a draw­ing tool. It allows build­ing process map­ping col­lab­o­ra­tively and is inte­grated with Google ser­vice. As the insti­tu­tion has access to Google Drive ser­vices, draw.io is a suit­able option. This tool offers sup­port to sev­eral BPM nota­tions, facil­i­tat­ing the cre­ation of flow­charts. The expected results are the increase of requests to use the tech­nol­ogy adopted to sup­port process map­ping, and the met­ric to indi­cate the pro­posal’s suc­cess is the increase of ini­tia­tives in this area;

• Action 2: Define own­ers of the high­est pri­or­ity processes. The pro­posal points to the need to iden­tify those respon­si­ble for the processes, as they are respon­si­ble for exe­cut­ing and improv­ing their processes. How­ever, Action 2 is con­di­tioned by the results of Action 1, since it is nec­es­sary to map processes to sub­se­quently assign the respon­si­bil­i­ties of each mem­ber of the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab. The rec­om­men­da­tion is the use of the RACI matrix (Respon­si­ble; Account­able; Con­sulted; Informed), which pro­vides trans­parency in the involve­ment of each per­son with the processes exe­cuted in the stud­ied envi­ron­ment. The RACI matrix must be avail­able to all Lab mem­bers. By build­ing a RACI matrix, the Lab may clar­ify the under­stand­ing of process roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties, define key peo­ple for the processes, and improve inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The expected result of this pro­posal imple­men­ta­tion refers to the increased respon­si­bil­ity for the man­age­ment of the most crit­i­cal processes, to be mea­sured by the per­cent­age of crit­i­cal busi­ness processes with defined own­ers.

• Action 3: Estab­lish a process improve­ment prac­tice, such as Lean, Six Sigma, or Total Qual­ity Man­age­ment. The map­ping and pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of processes should be done first, to facil­i­tate the achieve­ment of pos­si­ble improve­ments in the iden­ti­fied processes. One option is to adopt the prac­tices pro­posed by the PDCA cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) to sup­port the diag­no­sis of prob­lems at the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab, and also to obtain greater con­trol of the processes on an ongo­ing basis. It is worth not­ing that this prac­tice has no end and imple­ments the expected con­tin­u­ous improve­ment processes at the Lab. The appli­ca­tion of a con­tin­u­ous improve­ment method­ol­ogy is sup­posed to increase the orga­ni­za­tion’s effec­tive­ness and per­for­mance. It is mea­sured through the added value to process improve­ment projects.

5.3 Typical Challenges

Typ­i­cal chal­lenges refer to the pos­si­ble bar­ri­ers that the orga­ni­za­tion may face when imple­ment­ing the pro­posed improve­ments. Some of these chal­lenges are fore­seen in the IT-CMF frame­work and maybe of cul­tural or finan­cial natures. IT-CMF rec­om­mends spe­cific actions to over­come the antic­i­pated chal­lenges.

For exam­ple, inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion is com­pro­mised by the exis­tence of “islands” within the orga­ni­za­tion. This sit­u­a­tion was iden­ti­fied in the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab since each project is exe­cuted based on its coor­di­na­tor expe­ri­ence. The best prac­tices adopted in one project are not always repli­cated in other projects. Another chal­lenge to be faced by the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab is to give more impor­tance to the tools and meth­ods as they aggre­gate value to the busi­ness. In this con­text, what mat­ters is to mon­i­tor the process, eval­u­ate the results, and imple­ment improve­ments when it is noted that the process is not adding the expected value to the orga­ni­za­tion.

5.4 Presentation of the Proposed Improvements

After estab­lish­ing the matu­rity level and defin­ing the improve­ment pro­pos­als for the envi­ron­ment, find­ings were pre­sented to the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab’s man­age­ment team. Their feed­back was instru­men­tal in val­i­dat­ing the applic­a­bil­ity of IT-CMF. In the pre­sen­ta­tion, the con­cepts high­lighted in the lit­er­a­ture review were intro­duced with empha­sis on the IT-CMF frame­work BPM CC. The data col­lec­tion mech­a­nism was also pre­sented to senior man­age­ment. They agreed with the col­lec­tion process and with the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab matu­rity level in the con­text of BPM, accord­ing to IT-CMF.

Improve­ment actions were also pre­sented. The feed­back on Action 1 relates to the dif­fi­culty of under­stand­ing the con­cept of process man­age­ment per­formed by stu­dents since the Lab cus­tomer does not require or pay for it. An exist­ing process was used as an exam­ple. It also served to demon­strate how its man­age­ment and improve­ment can con­trib­ute to stu­dents’ aca­d­e­mic expe­ri­ence and the acqui­si­tion of spe­cific knowl­edge and skills. To clar­ify the con­cept of process man­age­ment, a model to guide the ini­ti­a­tion of the work was requested. Action 2, related to the use of the RACI matrix, obtained greater accep­tance. No objec­tions or clauses were pre­sented. How­ever, to com­ple­ment the process-map­ping model, guide­lines for using the RACI matrix were pro­duced. In the pre­sen­ta­tion, the impor­tance of devel­op­ing proper doc­u­men­ta­tion was stressed. Doc­u­ments include the dia­grams, respon­si­bil­ity matri­ces, doc­u­ments result­ing from the process exe­cu­tion, among oth­ers. They serve to keep the his­tory of the records used in the envi­ron­ment and can be accessed later. Improve­ment Action 3 received no com­ments. In any case, this prac­tice must be estab­lished in the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab envi­ron­ment.

In addi­tion to val­i­dat­ing the applic­a­bil­ity of IT-CMF in the envi­ron­ment, it is note­wor­thy that the mem­bers of the man­age­ment team also stressed the rel­e­vance of BPM activ­i­ties, espe­cially at a time when the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab may be repli­cated on other cam­puses, serv­ing as a model for the new envi­ron­ments.

6. Conclusions and Future Works

Young orga­ni­za­tions, such as the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab, or those going through a cri­sis or changes, usu­ally have dif­fi­culty pri­or­i­tiz­ing processes and changes nec­es­sary for improve­ments in the medium or long terms. A sound approach is to start with improve­ments that deliver quick and vis­i­ble results, so those involved grad­u­ally become more com­mit­ted. The dif­fi­culty may orig­i­nate in the cul­ture estab­lished in the orga­ni­za­tion, which some­times lim­its the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of new oppor­tu­ni­ties and, con­se­quently, its growth. This dif­fi­culty was iden­ti­fied in the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab, con­cern­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of changes, com­ing from both peo­ple and processes.

The pre­sen­ta­tion to senior man­age­ment aimed to make them aware of the impor­tance of man­ag­ing Lab’s processes. It was iden­ti­fied that there is no under­stand­ing of exactly how to approach the con­cept of process at the Lab since it is part of an aca­d­e­mic envi­ron­ment. Later, an exam­ple of what would be a process to be adopted in the aca­d­e­mic envi­ron­ment was devel­oped, both to assist in the man­age­ment and to enable gains at the ped­a­gog­i­cal level. This process strength­ens the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab objec­tive related to the immer­sion of stu­dents in an envi­ron­ment that sim­u­lates prac­tices and chal­lenges that will be expe­ri­enced in their pro­fes­sional lives.

In gen­eral, the improve­ment pro­pos­als were well received. More­over, the orga­ni­za­tion could resort to the prac­tices pro­posed by the IT-CMF frame­work. It con­tem­plates sev­eral prac­tices to be adopted by orga­ni­za­tions, in order to take greater advan­tage of the use of their IST and to help imple­ment the improve­ments. The rel­e­vance of IT-CMF is demon­strated by the fact that, in 2010, the frame­work already accounted for more than 10 mil­lion dol­lars in human resources involved, in its more than 60 thou­sand hours of work [Costello 2010]. Other actions to be devel­oped in the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab may add even more value to the its mem­bers, since there is the pos­si­bil­ity of repli­cat­ing the envi­ron­ment in other cam­puses, as well as the devel­op­ment of higher qual­ity prod­ucts and ser­vices in the var­i­ous projects involv­ing part­ner­ships with pub­lic and pri­vate insti­tu­tions.

The con­ti­nu­ity of this work under the guid­ance of IT-CMF in the Lab con­text is con­sid­ered of high rel­e­vance, as it intends to raise the envi­ron­ment’s BPM matu­rity level, espe­cially now that the Soft­ware Devel­op­ment Lab is going through a moment of expan­sion. IT-CMF indi­cates that other CCs may be influ­enced by improve­ments result­ing from the actions men­tioned in this work. The affected CCs are Busi­ness Plan­ning (BP), Risk Man­age­ment (RM), Ser­vice Ana­lyt­ics and Intel­li­gence (SAI), and Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture Man­age­ment (EAM). Work­ing on the prac­tices asso­ci­ated to the CCs men­tioned above will allow both higher con­sis­tency in the processes of the orga­ni­za­tion and increased con­fi­dence in the frame­work as a resource to be used in an aca­d­e­mic con­text. This study estab­lished the fea­si­bil­ity of apply­ing IT-CMF in an aca­d­e­mic envi­ron­ment. There­fore, the frame­work could be used by prac­ti­tion­ers to develop other case stud­ies in the Lab. More­over, IT-CMF could be incor­po­rated as a sup­ple­men­tal ref­er­ence in aca­d­e­mic and pro­fes­sional pro­grams related to the Lab.

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