Developing a Maturity Model for Standardizing IT Support Operations Across Geographically Distributed Multi-Office Organizations

• Author(s): Kelechi Chantel Egwuatu Anyanwu
• Paper ID: 1719190
• Page: 580-598
• Published Date: 30-11-2019
• Published In: Iconic Research And Engineering Journals
• Publisher: IRE Journals
• e-ISSN: 2456-8880
• Volume/Issue: Volume 3 Issue 5 November-2019

Abstract

Organizations that operate from multiple offices across different cities, regions, and countries often struggle to deliver information technology support that is consistent in quality, responsiveness, and process discipline. When each office develops its own tools, procedures, and service expectations, the result is fragmentation that raises operating cost, weakens user satisfaction, and obstructs enterprise-wide reporting and control. This paper develops a maturity model to help such organizations assess and advance the standardization of their IT support operations. The model is constructed by synthesizing prior work on IT service management, capability maturity, and the coordination of distributed organizations, and it comprises six assessment dimensions, namely process standardization, tooling and technology infrastructure, people and competencies, governance and measurement, knowledge management and communication, and service consistency, each evaluated across five progression levels that run from an initial and unmanaged state to an optimizing and uniformly standardized one. A distinguishing feature of the model is that it treats variation between offices, rather than the capability of any single office, as the primary signal of maturity, so that an organization of individually competent but divergent offices is correctly identified as not yet standardized. The model is expressed as a maturity matrix and is accompanied by an assessment method that specifies evidence gathering, scoring, cross-office aggregation, gap analysis, and target setting, together with transition guidance for advancing between levels. An extended hypothetical application demonstrates the method, and a comparison with established IT maturity frameworks situates the contribution. The model offers practitioners a structured and repeatable basis for advancing IT support standardization and provides researchers with an artifact ready for empirical evaluation.

Keywords

Maturity Model, IT Support Operations, Standardization, IT Service Management, Distributed Organizations, Design Science Research

Citations

IRE Journals:
Kelechi Chantel Egwuatu Anyanwu "Developing a Maturity Model for Standardizing IT Support Operations Across Geographically Distributed Multi-Office Organizations" Iconic Research And Engineering Journals Volume 3 Issue 5 2019 Page 580-598

IEEE:
Kelechi Chantel Egwuatu Anyanwu "Developing a Maturity Model for Standardizing IT Support Operations Across Geographically Distributed Multi-Office Organizations" Iconic Research And Engineering Journals, 3(5)