The IT Capability Maturity Framework:A Theory for Continuously Improving the Value Delivered from IT Capability.

Organizations and their Chief Information Officers (CIOs) face significant challenges in meeting increasing demand for IT services in the face of numerous challenges such as cost pressures, complexity, demand for innovation and increasingly the requirement to demonstrate value from IT investments. Research shows that CIOs struggle to capture and state the return from their IT investments and that there is no all encompassing IT improvement framework which is value focussed and comprehensive across the full spectrum of IT capability activity. Using a hybrid research approach involving a design science research methodology with an initial case study, an integrated artifact called the IT Capability Maturity (IT-CMF) framework has been researched and developed and had preliminary validation. The IT-CMF is an archetype of the levels and maturity stages an IT capability goes through as it defines, develops, controls, measures and improves its IT capability in support of value creation for the organization. The IT-CMF is thus a design pattern which CIOs can use as a generally reusable solution in the context of their own IT capability and business environment. The IT-CMF leverages the concept of dynamic capabilities providing a mechanism for not only developing capability but enabling reconfiguration to dynamically adapt to changing circumstances and strategy. The IT-CMF and its associated assessment instrument can act as an integrated improvement roadmap, assessment tool and improvement system for CIOs as they strive to improve IT capability in pursuit of improving value creation from IT.