MINCE introduction
MINCE – A Framework for Organizational Maturity – How fast can your organization adapt to the ever changing environments?
This section explains the main considerations for developing and utilizing maturity models in organizations, project teams or business units. Depending on the size and the complexity of the environment, MINCE allows utilization of its model in part or in full. The responsibility for the maturity development and the selection of the maturity model in the organization lies with the management.
The benefits gained using MINCE, the genesis of this method and the goals to be set before commencing are also briefly described in this section. Finally, there are a few words with regard to the sources used during this creative process.
Models
Models provide a simplified representation of reality. As such, models are by definition as imperfect (they are a simplification) as they can be useful. They provide the means to investigate what if-scenarios. What would happen with the world population should an ice age occur? What if we mix two chemical substances? What if my organization continues to be unable to respond to innovative new products that our competitor increasingly brings to the market?
Organization
An organization is (Strikwerda) the combination of people or companies, knowledge and funds, which is identified in society with the products and/or services that it produces and the routines and competences required in its context. Its function is: production of products and services required by society and provision of an income for its participants. This MINCE site focuses on project oriented organizations.
Project oriented organization
A project oriented organization will develop (mature) according to a sequence of steps that has been prepared in advance. Each of these steps is planned and each will require means specifically made available for the purpose. Each step will bring predetermined results.
Maturity
The MINCE concept of Maturity focuses on the ability of organizations to follow market changes and environmental changes. With age comes wisdom, some say. The same applies to organizations. They will learn from their mistakes and successes. Some wil be able to learn, to mature, rapidly. Others require more time and effort.
If careful planning is undertaken, organizations will be able to learn by following a controlled path. Management will be educated and quickly increase the organization's maturity – through their participation in a system that will assist them in travelling along that path.
Maturity Increments in Organizations
Project oriented organizations are accustomed to achieving results according to predefined plans. They will typically realize their internal changes in a controlled manner, determining in advance the time planning, budgetary constraints, quality requirements and scope.
Organic organizations are not accustomed to achieving results according to plans. Internal changes will not be triggered as a result of anticipating future requirements. Internal changes will overcome these types of organizations.
Project oriented organizations will be able to learn faster than organic organizations, since the former have the intrinsic ability to develop their competences via a path set out to address the purpose.
Controlled Environments
An organization will only be able to properly develop if it allows for changes in its structure, processes, employees and knowledge base.
A project oriented organization will allow for such internal changes in a more effective and efficient manner than an organic organization. A project oriented organization will realize its internal changes in the same methodical manner it uses for projects – by containing the changes in a →controlled environment in order to be able to properly manage and accomplish them in this way a project oriented organization will be able to keep such internal changes under control. Note that the organization ans the projects realized by the organization can be (extremely) dynamic and demanding – and these are managed effectively by the project oriented approach.
Project oriented organizations are well able to realize their own development effectively and efficiently because of the project oriented approach. In particular, project oriented organizations are able to maintain their internal development with a clear vision and mission and with a predetermined set of budget, time planning, quality and scope.
Organic oriented organizations will not be able to keep the dynamic of changing environments as effectively under control, due to the fact that they will typically be unprepared and will be facing difficulties that they have little or no defense against.
Note that the controlled environment in MINCE addresses the whole organization, inclusive of all units and departments, one of which is the project management department. MINCE aims for the whole organization to operate in a project oriented manner by facilitating individual and group transformation.
This is different from other controlled environments, such as for example used by PRINCE2. The PRINCE2 controlled environment is specifically addressing the project management department and the way projects are being undertaken.
A controlled environment is required in order to be able to make optimum use of the MINCE model: MINCE = Maturity INcrements IN Controlled Environments.
Although there are several ways in which organizational changes in practice can be implemented, MINCE recommends the implementation of organizational changes in a controlled environment by using one or multiple programmes. These programmes each have control over one or multiple projects in combination with one or multiple sets of activities, which is illustrated in the adjecent figure.
MINCE Benefits
As soon as the organization starts using the MINCE measurement toolset, management will gain in an insight into:
- maturity of the organization;
- skills of the staff;
- abilities of the organization's customer chain;
- effectiveness of the organization's projects;
- ways in which the organization benefits from past lessons learned; and
- ability to adapt to change.
On the basis of these insights, the organization will have the ability to improve as required and will be able to:
- rapidly adapt to environment (market) developments;
- provide people with the training required to sharpen their skills and enthusiasm;
- identify customer-related difficulties and perhaps do something about them;
- improve the way changes are implemented, so that such changes will be more effective;
- ensure that mistakes are only made once and learn lessons from these; and
- develop a more flexible organization, ready to deal with change.
And, at the same time:
- the investment can be as high or as little as you are willing to accept;
- outcomes can be rapidly available;
- findings can be identified over a period of time indicating the trend;
- measurement is made extremely easy;
- if preferred, measurement can be subcontracted to external specialists;
- if preferred, measurement can be repeated as often and as thourough as the organization prefers; and
- respondents need not be in a particular function – anyone may provide the required input.
MINCE Background
MINCE is the result of several years research. This started in order to determine a common way for the measurement of organizational maturity. Input came from several project, programme and interim manager, each using their extensive experience to identify the essential elements. The goal was to find the means to be able to measure the organizational maturity level as a basis of comparison of companies. Certain fundamental characteristics were agreed upon. Maturity level determines the flexibility with which the investigated organization is able to adapt to the changing environment. The MINCE developers agreed that the most attractive way to realize adaptations would be by means of projects or programmes to be undertaken:
- in a predefined time frame;
- with preset goals;
- with preset quality requirements;
- using a budget made available for the purpose; and
- using a temporary organization, that exists for the duration of the adaptation tasks.
Firstly, the seemingly most suitable existing models were studied: CMM, EFQM and PMMM were considered, and described on this website, in order to determine whether these are acceptable models for identifying organizational maturity. At a later stage, OPM3 also came into perspective, and there have been details about the way this model works added elsewhere on this website. The findings (at a one-click distance from here) led to the conclusion that whilst these models are preferable in comparison to simply 'doing nothing', they are insufficiently suited for the goals set. Secondly, it took much time and seemingly endless discussions before deciding on a set of six Towers to be the base of the MINCE model. The discussion continues today and the author does not expect it will ever finally die out. In fact, the discussion deepens the quality of the MINCE model and contributes to getting its foundations as solid as possible – so it ought not to stop.
MINCE Targets
In summary, the primary target is to support organizations into getting swift and accurate insights into the speed with which their organization is able to deal with changing environments. The second target of MINCE is to enable organizations to improve the way they handle such changes. To complicate matters further, it is also necessary to be able to measure in a way that allows for repetition – so that trends can be revealed and policy can be adjusted, if required, appropriately. Finally, MINCE allows for three maturity audit report variants:
- The Bronze variant reveals the actual situation to a certain degree, rapidly and extremely low costs.
- The Silver and Gold variants describe the actual situation through the eyes of specialist investigators and allow for immediate improvements and quick wins.
MINCE Sources
The MINCE model is property of the MINCE Foundation, and it is the result of several years of discussion and restructuring of what immediately proved to be an effective and efficient approach for measuring organizational development. MINCE is also the result of several years of sorting topics, criteria, perspectives, and challenges, reshuffling them, discussion with fellow project and programme managers and deb ating about them all over agin – in the process having replaced some parts. For a period of several years, these people all worked together and at about that time this development started. The sharpening of MINCE will abviously not stop today. Improvements are to be expected and welcomed. A model intended to guide organizations towards improved flexibility ought to be able to deal with its own change equally well.
Summary
MINCE will investigate, determine and improve organizational maturity according to the summary of the regular proceedings flow, shown in the adjecent figure. Typically, MINCE improvements aimed at bringing the organization closer to the ambition level will be implemented in a project or programme oriented manner.