Empirical Research on an IT Application Maturity Model

Based on field visits on 30 enterprises and in-depth interviews of 64 firm managers,this research proposes an evaluation model of IT application maturity,and exploratory surveys are conducted to develop survey questionnaires. Thereafter,132 firms are surveyed and in-depth interviews of 268 respondents are conducted to collect survey data,and IT Application Maturity Model is established to measure and analyze firm IT applieation maturity.Structural Equation Modeling approaeh is used to test the model's validity.Based on results of previous sections,authors give a comparative study of IT application maturity on firms in different kinds,industries,sizes,and stages,and detailed evaluation is then conducted on firm IT application maturity,which enriches the theory on firm IT application maturity.IT Application Maturity Model provides firms with a self-diagnostic tool.Using this evaluation model,firm managers and managers of IT departments may measure firm IT application maturity in detail,and thereby straightly visualize the performance in various IT application dimensions and indexes.Continuous improvement can be achieved by dynamie evaluation.