Evaluating a quantitative IT maturity self-assessment approach: Does it give a good way of the as-is state?

It has become increasingly recognized that IT organizations must ensure that IT services are aligned to business needs and actively support them. Ther efore, the internal IT service management processes are under constant improvement. Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the most commonly
adopted framework for IT service management. The r ecommendation is to start an ITIL implementation or improvement process by defining a baseline of current state - “wher e are we today”. This helps identify the gap to a wanted future state and will become the basis for an ITIL implementation or improvement plan. One of the most commonly used methods to define current state is to do a maturity assessment using a quantitative self-assessment approach. The purpose of this research is to empirically understand how well a
qua nti ta ti ve s el f-ass ess ment d efi nes the a s -i s s ta te a nd ther eby th e ma turi ty of a n I T orga ni za ti on. The research was carried out by conducting a quantitative self-assessment in an IT organization. To understand if the self-assessment produced viable results a meta-evaluation of the survey was conducted through interviews and a document study. The main conclusion, is that the use of a quantitative self-assessment does not define the as-is state and maturity well enough. To do so, it has to be complemented by for instance
interviews or another type of internal knowledge to produce a good enough baseline.