Content Maturity Model

A knowledge portal is an enterprise platform used to structure, organize, and manage the volume of documents (content) that continually flows through an organization. It is also the vehicle used by an organization to deliver documents to knowledge workers in a standardized, controlled, and consistent manner. This on-demand access to current corporate knowledge provides the knowledge worker with the most up-to-date information needed to execute business transactions, run business processes, manage resources, and analyze and synthesize enterprise knowledge.

The impact that a knowledge portal will have on the operation of an organization, however, can be very significant and potentially disruptive. The implementation of a knowledge portal requires much planning and is best performed in stages. Knowledge portals should be designed to deploy the required features and functionality in stages, as the organization matures and more demands are places on technology. As the knowledge portal grows it should introduce a level of capability that elevates the portal to a platform for improving the organization’s processes, knowledge management and collaboration abilities. A systematic approach is needed to build a knowledge portal in a modular manner that provides an organization with business process improvements each step of the way.

A maturity model is a useful tool for measuring the development or maturity of some aspect of an organization’s operation. The Content Maturity Model (CMM) is a proposed approach that identifies a set of methodologies for defining a content-centric organization as a series of maturity levels that ensures an adequate improvement has been made and forms a foundation for building more enterprise features and functionality. The Content Maturity Model provides an organization with a common language and a shared vision, a framework for prioritizing actions, and a way to define what improvement means. There are five stages or levels in the Content Maturity Model: Structured (Level 1), Content (Level 2), Strategic (Level 3), Context (Level 4), and Analytic (Level 5).

Each of the five document maturity levels is based on a principle founded in The Document Methodology. ⁽¹⁾

1.   Maturity Level 1 (Structure): Documents Structure Computer Systems.
Maturity Level 1 is achieved through the deployment of a Content Technology Architecture - a set of hardware and software technologies that provides a client-server network to deliver an extensible web-based platform that enables structured document services. The structure of the Content Technology Architecture must enable exceptional access to content, integration with existing applications and tools, a rich development and customization environment, unified collaborative workspaces, and services to better structure processes. Client/server networks and software must supply structured documents on-demand and facilitate document collaboration. Collaboration technologies must provide core platform services on which to build information architectures. A content-centric process infrastructure must enable, accelerate and automate the two enterprise lifecycles (content and workflow) that systematize process.

There are two components that need to be planned when designing a Structured Enterprise Knowledge Portal (SEKP), the Content Technology Architecture and Information Architectures.

The preparation for the deployment of the Content Technology Architecture involves the following activities:

·    Establish a governance oversight committee to manage the design and deployment of technologies and applications that comprise the Knowledge Portal.

·    Design the server farm topology that defines both the physical (hardware) and logical (software) network infrastructure components that are required to provide the communication, application, workflow, search, and file service needs of the Knowledge Portal. This may include planning for global deployment.

The preparation for the deployment of Information Architectures involves the following activities:

·     Develop an Enterprise Knowledge Portal Governance Plan. The plan should establish governance policies for the design, implementation, and operation of the Enterprise Knowledge Portal.

·     Design information architectures that organize enterprise content around business processes and provide well planned hierarchical structures of web sites, web pages, document libraries, and lists.

·     Design a content-centric organization by identifying forms-based knowledge objects within business processes and creating content-centric workflows to automate and record business process activities.

·     Plan for data protection and recovery to support document versioning, data recovery (recycle bins and database backups), disaster recovery, and data migration.

2.   Maturity Level 2 (Content): Documents Record Enterprise Knowledge.
Maturity Level 2 is achieved through the deployment of an Enterprise Content Management system that includes document management and records management. Document management must formalize the creation, publication and disposition of enterprise knowledge and making it accessible to the organization through enterprise search and workflow. Records management must seamlessly address corporate and regulatory compliance within the organization. Effective records management requires an organization-wide commitment to planning, implementing, overseeing, and participating in the records management program.

The preparation for the deployment of document management involves the following activities:

·     Design for document management by analyzing document usage and planning document libraries, content types, workflows, versioning, checkout requirements, information rights management, and enterprise content storage.

·     Develop a search plan that identifies the content sources to crawl and crawl-rules to minimize server resource utilization and network traffic.

The preparation for the deployment of records management involves the following activities:

·     Develop a Records Management Governance Plan. The plan should identify roles and responsibilities and establish governance policies for the design, implementation, and operation of an Enterprise Records Center.

·     Perform content usage and regulatory requirements analysis to describe and categorize content that need to become records, provides source locations, and describes how the content will move to the records management application.

·     Develop a file plan describing, for each type of record, where they should be retained as records, the policies that apply to them, how they need to be retained, how they should be disposed of, and who is responsible for managing them.

·     Based on the file plan design a Records Center site to organize and store all records. Plan record routing requirements, policy enforcement requirements (auditing, expiration, bar codes), and workflows (when, where, and how to move documents into the Records Center).

3.   Maturity Level 3 (Strategic): Documents Provide Facts to Manage People
Maturity Level 3 is achieved through the deployment of a project management system. Project management must gain visibility, insight, and control over work activities to enhance business decision-making, improves alignment with business strategy, maximizes resource utilization, and makes it possible to measure and increase operational efficiency.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are metrics used to quantify objectives to reflect an organization's strategic performance. A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a visual cue that communicates the amount of progress made toward a goal. Key Performance Indicators are valuable for teams, managers, and businesses to evaluate quickly the progress made against measurable goals.

The preparation for the deployment of a project management system involves the following activities:

·     Determine organization and user needs for the project management system. Plan team roles and responsibilities and identify project management requirements.

·     Design project management solution architecture for the client, web, application, and database tiers.

·     Plan site structure and navigation to helping users find and share information and work together.

·     Plan project life cycle for the creation, management, and retirement of projects.

4.   Maturity Level 4 (Context): Documents Define and Control the Enterprise Process
Maturity Level 4 is achieved through the deployment of a Business Process Management (BPM) system. BPM views an organization as a set of processes that can be defined, managed, and optimized. In a very real sense, business processes are the business, and so making them better is a clear path to improving the business itself.

·     Evaluate the current process improvement opportunities by assessing the current strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s processes and process assets.

5.   Maturity Level 5 (Analytic): Documents Guide Enterprise Change
Through the use of business intelligence (BI) tools data and documents can be efficiently accessed to analyze, report on and share enterprise knowledge which can lead to overall better decision making and resource management. BI helps accomplish this by integrating, storing, reporting, and analyzing data so that it delivers insight, which in turn drives better business decisions.  The capabilities Maturity Level 5 needs to deliver are Data Integration, Data Warehousing, Reporting and Analysis and Performance Management.