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In 2009 TomTom developed a model, called the MFM-model, which should reflect the maturity, feasibility and progression of a Personal Navigation Device software integration project. However, this model did not reflect all required aspects of the integration project and therefore was unable to correctly reflect the maturity, feasibility or progression. Furthermore, creating and maintaining this model proved to be too time-consuming. In this thesis we identify the problems of this model, propose a number of improvements to eliminate this problems and explain how these improvements have been implemented. In addition, we discuss how the model can be automatically generated from Jira and Perforce in order to reduce the required effort for creating and maintaining it. As an end result, this thesis will deliver a MFM 2.0 prototype which is an automated and improved version of the initial model. We will review this prototype by comparing survey-results taken at the initial situation and the improved situation. To further inspect this prototype, a small case-study is performed to analyze the accuracy, usage and importance of it.

This research has been performed with the organisation of NedTrain. NedTrain is an organisation which is responsible for the maintenance on the rolling stock of the Dutch railway system. In 2006 they have implemented project portfolio management in their organisation however they struggle to manage it properly. For that reason they want to assess and improve their project portfolio management. This can be realized by using maturity models which is an instrument to criticise the project portfolio management of an organisation. The objective of this research is to compare project portfolio management maturity models to the scientific literature. It will link the aspects described in maturity models with the topics described in the scientific literature to identify the theoretical gap, to identify the practical use of the maturity models and to provide improvement measures for NedTrain’s project portfolio management. Eventually the goal is to develop a framework which can criticise all the aspects of project portfolio management for an organisation. Based on the objective the following research question is formulated: “How useful are maturity models to diagnose and give recommendations on the project portfolio management of an organisation?” The question will be answered using the case study research approach. The first step in this research is performing a literature review on project portfolio management. The focus of this review is on project portfolio management in general, the bottlenecks most organisations encounter and the best practices of project portfolio management. According to the literature, organisations encounter problems in several areas of project portfolio management. The most important problem areas are project management activities, information management and resource management. These problem areas will be used in the comparison between the literature and the maturity models. The second step in this research is selecting a maturity model which can assist in defining, measuring and improving NedTrain’s project portfolio management. In this study several maturity models are tested on their suitability using selection criteria. Based on the criteria the model that is most suitable for this study is the Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3). The P3M3 model consists of several process perspectives including: management control, risk management, resource management, etc. The process perspectives are compared to the problem areas described in the literature, to enrich the P3M3 model and ensure it covers all the topics of project portfolio management. The comparison revealed that ‘project management activities’ and ‘information management’ are not described in the P3M3 model but are relevant according to the literature. This identifies there are gaps in the P3M3 model and so the topics are added to the model. Eventually a modified and improved P3M3 model is used to determine the maturity of NedTrain’s project portfolio management and to provide improvement measures. The next step in this research is the use of the modified P3M3 model to determine the current situation of NedTrain’s project portfolio management. The assessment is performed by several experienced employees of NedTrain including the project portfolio manager and the manager of fleet services. The different perspectives on the answers were discussed with the involved employees to deliberate on the final outcome and to generate practical recommendations. Eventually the assessment illustrates that benefits management, risk management and resource management are the most underdeveloped process perspectives in NedTrain’s project portfolio management. These underdeveloped process perspectives are reviewed against the literature. This indicates that portfolio resource management is to some extent already acknowledged in the scientific literature, but research on portfolio benefits management and risk management is not yet performed, since the review on these topics had no result. Therefore it is recommended that both topics will be reviewed in further researches. In this study several recommendations are given on the underdeveloped process perspectives. The most important recommendations on NedTrain’s project portfolio management are: - Start at the top and make sure the senior management supports project portfolio management; - The base of project portfolio management is a well defined project management process, make sure project management is mature enough. The specific recommendations on the three underdeveloped processes in NedTrain’s project portfolio management are for NedTrain’s benefits management: - Create a framework to centrally manage and track the delivery of portfolio benefits. This framework should have explicit statements on how benefits enabled by initiatives actually contribute to business value and strategic objectives. For NedTrain’s risk management: - Make sure the risk analysis will not only be conducted in the early stage of a project but also further in the project, it should become a constant management process. And for NedTrain’s resource management: - There should become policies and processes describing how portfolio resources are acquired, managed and deployed. Based on the results obtained from the assessment it can be concluded that the modified P3M3 model provides an impressive list of bottlenecks and improvement measures for the organisation. Although further research needs to be performed on the modified P3M3 model, it will be very useful tool for organisations to provide a first impression on the maturity of their project portfolio management.

With the continuous rising competitiveness, the need for improving performance has become vital for organizations to stay in the market. In order to improve the performance, one first needs to evaluate the output of a process or procedure on basis of efficiency. Having it measured, the processes or procedures could be modified such that it increases the output, efficiency or effectiveness. For this measuring, a tool known as maturity model has been developed over the past years. Despite the existence of many project management maturity models, several shortcomings and lacking can still be found, such as ignoring the human and organizational aspects as one of the many examples. This results in the main research question of this report: “How can the existing maturity models be further enhanced and applied effectively across several industries?” This question is further divided into three sub-questions, where the first sub-question focuses on the current state of the project management maturity models and the project management elements a model should possess, which will assist in making a new project management maturity model. The second sub-question delves deeper in the various project management elements (competencies) and identifies commonalities and dependencies of the maturity levels of these competencies. The last sub-question serves the purpose of testing the applicability of the newly developed maturity model. The methodology employed to collect the data is a multiple case study with multiple resources. The quantitative approach helped gathering empirics by applying the model on various organizations. Followed by a detailed analysis, a qualitative approach was used to validate the model and its findings, to minimize biases in the research conclusions. Besides thoroughly analysing the existing project management maturity models on their unique features and shortcomings, this study provided a newly developed maturity model which addressed these shortcomings. The application of the model on various organizations and the followed data analysis together with the validation interviews provided some interesting findings like: - The categorization of various project management competencies targeting a broader set of competencies (especially soft and societal factors). The categorization, helped finding out what elements within the field of project management were given the most/least importance and what the correlations were amongst these elements - Besides one overall maturity level, unlike existing maturity models, this maturity model due to its unique way of calculating provides four overall maturity levels. Each of the four overall maturity levels, represent one of the four categories, where various elements are grouped based on their properties. This gives a broader overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, such that those weaknesses can be easily identified and worked upon. - Although maturity models in general get easily influenced by subjectivity and different opinions of respondents, the questionnaire used for this model was found to make things more objective due to the clear descriptive answers. Besides contributing to the existing academic literature, this study also provided empirical evidence on the way various project management competencies are perceived and might need extra focus. The empirics and recommendations provided by this study could then be used for further for further research or be directly applied in practice.

The number of cyber-attacks creates the realization that the vulnerability of critical infrastructures of a country are increasing. The numbers of cyber-attacks are so high that governments fear a cyber war. This makes it important for governments to prepare their nation for cyber war. To be able to make the right preparation and to design the right resilient systems it is necessary to know how dangerous other countries can be by measuring their offensive cyber warfare capabilities. This leads to the design of a model based on offensive cyber warfare attributes and public indicators for the assessment of offensive cyber warfare capabilities. The aim of this research is to provide an approach of a maturity model to assess offensive cyber warfare capabilities of countries based on public data, by which governments can make better decisions and policies to prepare themselves for cyber war. The research has been started with an in depth desk research describing the process of cyber warfare, which resulted in a diagram with 6 categories. These categories have been defined based on some literature about traditional warfare and an analogy about individuals in war. The 6 categories describing the process are: Motivation, Channel, Target, Means, Method and Damage. This diagram shows the difference between traditional and cyber war. Only offensive cyber warfare attributes are specified in this diagram. This was necessary for finding the indicators for offensive cyber warfare capability. From these 6 categories only two have been used to define offensive cyber warfare capability. Motivation level does not contribute to capability level, but to the threat level. If one is motivated, it does not necessarily mean that one has the capability. The channel is the environment where the cyber attack is launched. Having access to the channel, having knowledge about it and skills for operating in this medium is necessary to launch a cyber attack. So channel is an important group to consider for assessing offensive cyber warfare capability. The Target actually does not decide on the capability of another. So this is not important for the design of the model. The Means are very important to assess the offensive capability level, because having the ability to create the means, having access to them and the ability to use them shows how capable one is. The Method is the way how the attack is performed for example from behind or from the front and thus is not contributing to the assessment of the capability level. Also Damage is not contributing to the capability of a country, because anyone can cause damage by hiring others. So based on this analysis Channel and Means are important for assessing the offensive cyber warfare capability level. Based on these 2 classification and their details in the diagram the indicators for offensive cyber warfare capability have been identified. This resulted in a theoretical model showing the relation between the indicators and the cyber warfare attributes. As data to direct indicators are limited, an approach of a model has been given based on proxy variable and indirect indicators for which data was available. Finding data for indirect indicators has been difficult as well, but there are 16 indicators for which data has been found. The dataset for offensive cyber warfare capability was not available, so a proxy variable has been used. The closest proxy variable based on the categories Channel and Means is the ICT development index, which describes the access to, use of and skills in ICT. ICT development has been build from 11 indicators, from which 9 are the same for offensive cyber warfare capability. The assumption has been made that the ICT development index is a data collection method for offensive cyber warfare capability. Using the 16 indicators and the proxy variable the model has been designed following some analysis as is shown in the flowchart. The flowchart describes the statistical analysis in SPSS. On the 16 indicators factor analysis was done, which resulted in 4 factors that are the independent variables to explain offensive cyber warfare as the dependent variable. As there is no such dataset for the dependent variable the ICT development index is used in its place. Based on a linear regression the equation has been found; this is the model to assess offensive cyber warfare capability. Due to limitation only an approach of a model for assessing offensive cyber warfare capability has been given, which is based on proxy variable and indirect indicators. The equation in this report is a first approach of a model assessing offensive cyber warfare capability, on which further research can be conducted. The growth in capability level is described by maturity levels. There are 5 maturity levels defined for offensive cyber warfare capability based on the Channel and Means capability, which are: Beginners, Semi-intermediate, Intermediate, Semi-advanced and Advanced. In chapter 1 an introduction has been given, describing the aim of this research, the research questions and the research methods. In chapter 2 the theoretical background has been built resulting in a diagram describing offensive warfare, maturity levels and a theoretical model for assessing offensive cyber warfare capability. Chapter 3 gives an approach of a model and the statistical analysis to be performed. Chapter 4 has been devoted on reflection and the report ends with conclusions and research relevance.

Asset management aims at improving the overall performance of assetintensive industries by making and executing systematic and highest value decisions about the use and care of assets. To assist organizations to improve their asset management performance, maturity models can be used. In this paper we describe two applications of the Infrastructure Management Maturity Matrix (IM³). The IM³ consists of five maturity levels on the vertical axis (ad hoc, repeatable, standard, managed, optimal), and seven asset management dimensions on the horizontal axis (information management, internal coordination, external coordination, market approach, risk management, processes & roles, and culture & leadership). We present the results of two maturity checks performed at the Dutch National Highway Agency Rijkswaterstaat in 2011 and 2012. The results show significant progress and learning on all dimensions of the maturity matrix. In the discussion we reflect on the findings and possible future developments for RWS. We also discuss the potential impact of infrastructure maturity models for the professionalization of asset intensive organizations.

A Project Management & Project Portfolio Management Maturity Model is developed based on a vast body of knowledge. The Model was applied to 30 companies and analyzed statistically in order to provide an assessment for each of the companies. The quantitative data was further analyzed to link Project Management & Project Portfolio Management Maturity to Project Success.

The development on neutron activation analysis (NAA) into a technique of practical interest effectively started about 60 years ago, when nuclear reactors became available and widely accessible as intense sources of neutrons. During 50 out these 60 years, the series of Modern Trends in Activation Analysis (MTAA) Conferences acted as a true companion and facilitator of this growth. As trendwatcher they signalized the many initiatives that contributed to the development of activation analysis and its applications. A period has come to an end of impressive development resulting from sometimes revolutionary changes in radiation detection and data processing, and much improved irradiation facilities, NAA has reached a full stage of development, with emphasis on routine application and with remaining developments of in marginal impact. NAA is being challenged increasingly in the last 30 years by alternative techniques for multi trace element analysis. The MTAA Conference and with it the ICAA, the International Committee on Activation Analysis, can play an important and active role in this process of identifying and selecting key areas, and even promoting concerted action in those areas. Such an evolution of focus from retrospective to prospective, from trendwatcher to trendsetter, may well allow the MTAA Conference to continue and even expand its role in future development of NAA and its applications. The ideas about the future of the MTAA Conferences and its organization are elaborated upon and some possible subjects for focused development activities are indicated.

This paper presents the multi‐view assessment of SDI status in the Republic of Kosovo performed in 2007 and in 2010. The main objective of this research was to assess the SDI of Kosovo and to define the driving forces needed to support SDI strategy development. The research assesses the status of SDI implementation of Kosovo using SDI readiness Index (Delgado et al., 2005), INSPIRE State of Play (Vandenbroucke et al., 2008), and Maturity Matrix (Kok and Van Loenen, 2005) as assessment approaches. Each approach treats the assessment of SDIs from a different view and context and so with a different purpose in mind. An SDI readiness survey questionnaire was submitted to the SDI stakeholders in Kosovo in 2007 and 2010. The INSPIRE State of Play was assessed for the 5 countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia and Luxembourg and an attempt to define the State of Play for SDI of Kosovo was also part of the assessment. The last assessment was defining the Maturity Matrix for the SDIs of Slovenia and Kosovo. This research has led to 6 driving forces selected to support the development strategy of SDI at the national level in Kosovo.

This thesis research aimed to improve M&A preperation processes related wit IT. By combining IT process and IT value driven components with the aim to complement current IT Due Diligence analysis by providing more insights in IT integration issues. Thereby contributing to the feasibility of the IT integration phase.

The nature of working relationship between owner and contractor in engineering and construction projects is considered to have a major effect on the project performance. This research focuses on factors that may influence owner-contractor relationship effectiveness. Literature suggests that different types of contract, being one of these factors, tend to influence owner-contractor relationships. The aim of this research was is to clarify the role of different contract types on owner-contractor relationship effectiveness in industrial construction projects. A Q-methodology based study was performed to reveal the subjective perceptions of the project managers on the relative influence of various contract aspects and of other influencing factors of owner-contractor relationships. The influence of contract types on the relationships for project-specific situations was investigated by a project evaluation study. In this study, the relationship quality of four different projects was evaluated, using a relationship maturity assessment matrix. The research results show that contract type is not the tool to influence relationship effectiveness. The only contract aspects, which are identified as instrumental to improve the relationship, are contact aspects related to project structure specifying roles and responsibilities, and contract aspects about targeted criteria for performance.

Over the last few years the general awareness concerning sustainability increased significantly. Also companies are making big efforts to make their processes and products more sustainable. One of the key concepts in this search to more sustainable processes is the concept of Sustainable Development which is often defined as development that 'meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. A concept within Sustainable Development which is often used is the Triple Bottom Line, which indicates the three pillars of sustainability: people, planet and profit. Within companies Management Systems focussed on environmental or social aspects are used to manage sustainability topics. These Sustainability Frameworks are used to identify and manage topics related to the sustainable performance of companies. Three major concepts within the management of Sustainable Development are Corporate Social Responsibility, Environmental Management System and Environmental and Social Reporting. An overview of a large number of available sustainability frameworks, as well as their properties has been made. The Capability Maturity Model is a model which is used in a wide variety of industries to indicate the maturity of different capabilities for processes within an organization. Based on the outcomes of the model the organization can improve its processes to disciplined management processes. The main advantages of a Capability Maturity Model are increase of business success, increase of cost effectiveness, possibility to combine with other technologies such as ISO standards, used in wide-variety of industries, long life-span and a good reputation among government and research institutes. Within this research the concept of the Capability Maturity Model has been combined with insights from the field of Sustainable Development in order to improve business performance in a sustainable manner, the Sustainable Development Maturity Model. The following components have been identified as essential for building a new Capability Maturity Model: A number of levels, General descriptor of each level, Generic description of the contents and characteristics of each capability level, A number of Key Performance Areas or dimensions, A number of topics and activities for each Key Performance Area, A description of each activity as it might be executed or performed at each maturity level. Six levels for the Sustainable Development Maturity Model have been defined based on existing definitions in other Capability Maturity Models and insights from the field of Sustainable Development. Level 0 indicates compliance to regulation and is a bottom-line requirement. For level 1 to level 5 generic definitions for the levels have been made containing contents and characteristics of the level as well as a generic descriptor for the levels. These descriptors are respectively: Initial, Initial Transformation, Light Sustainability, Sustainable Transformation and Reinforced Sustainability. A scoring system has been developed to indicate the correlation between the different layers of the system. The score of the different topics can be filled in at layer 5. The lowest score of the topics results in the score for the activity. The average score for the activity result in the score for the Key Sustainability Areas, unless there is a score 0, then it will result in a score 0. The lowest score for the Key Sustainability Areas result in the score for the framework (or the condition). The sensitivity of the scoring, which means the influence of a certain score on the end-result, has been tested using several cases. The information on the above mentioned frameworks have been expanded with information from its websites and quantitative information from websites as www.springerlink.com. From this list of frameworks three different frameworks have been selected for use in the Sustainable Development Maturity Model, one for every main category of conditions (Worker, Social and Environmental). By using knock-out criteria the number of frameworks was reduced to 8 (ISO 14001, ISO 26000, EMAS, OHSAS 18001, SA8000, AA1000, the Natural Step and Global Reporting Initiative). By looking to the background of the frameworks as well as the popularity of the frameworks ISO 14001, ISO 26000 and SA8000 have been selected for the Sustainable Development Maturity Model for respectively Environmental Conditions, Social Conditions and Worker Conditions. From the selected frameworks Key Sustainability Activities and Activities belonging have been identified. It appeared that a number of Key Sustainability Activities was overlapping and thus choice have been made to exclude certain aspects to prevent doubles. For all Activities definitions have been made as well as a descriptor for each Activity. For the Social Conditions also definitions have been made for the Topics as well as a descriptor for the Topics to show that it is possible to work on this level of detail within the Sustainable Development Maturity Model. The found Key Sustainability Areas and Activities have been validated using publications of several well-performing companies (by means of sustainable performance). As soon as the maturity of an organization for different aspects has been determined the organization may decide to work on certain aspects. For this several practices in order to improve the maturity of the organization have been suggested. Within this research changes for three different fields of organizational improvement have been suggested: firstly an overview of aspects to improve the organizational performance of an organization, secondly the improvement of organizational processes, including a new organizational structure and thirdly by looking to the organizational learning processes. A reflection of how these practices can be used have been given as well as an overview of how aspects to improve the organizational performance can specifically be used to improve the performance of an activity or topic from one level to another. Finally a concept version of the model has been made using Microsoft Excel showing that it is possible to build the model with previous steps. A reflection has been given on the use of the model and on the challenges and limitations as identified in the introduction of the thesis. A total overview of the model in one figure has been given showing the relation between the different steps. This thesis ends with the conclusion that it is possible possible to combine insights from the field of the Capability Maturity Model with insights from the field of Sustainable Development. In further research the Sustainable Development Maturity Model should be further developed and it should be determined if the model has an added value for the sustainable management and performance of an organization.

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The development of a CSR capability maturity model to assess an organization's CSR performance, based on the actions and expectations that are given by the ISO26000 guideline. The research includes a study to view CSR as an organizational innovation, which has been established theoretically and validated through interviews. The development of the CSR capability maturity model first starts with the development of a CSR maturity model. The maturity model has been validated through a session of interviews and a questionnaire. A qualitative study categorizes all CSR actions and expectations from the ISO26000 guideline into the maturity model, transforming the maturity model into the CSR capability maturity model. The CSR capability maturity model has then been tested in a case study research on one organization.