The Dell experience: from maturity model

assessment to strategic planning.

By Rosenquist, Deborah
Published on AllBusiness.com

Source: http://www.allbusiness.com/business-planning/business-development-strategic-
alliances/651480-1.html#ixzz1etomWFib

BACKGROUND

Dell Computer Corporation currently develops four products differentiated for specific
customer segments. At Dell, the Information Development area is a centralized organization
that supports all the company's development efforts.

Within the corporation, Information Development is generally regarded as having well-

established processes, being well-organized, and delivering on schedule every time.
Unfortunately, the first two elements have not always been considered positive attributes by
all members of the development organization. In fact, a year ago, our processes had grown
somewhat rigid and the organization had lost some of its previous flexibility, a situation that
appeared to be encumbering our ability to support our dynamically changing development
environment.

Once each year, everyone in Dell commits to a work plan that establishes the expectations of
the employee's manager and the commitment of the employee for job performance. One area
noted on my work plan last year was benchmarking the Information Development area against
others in the industry.

A natural outgrowth of my preliminary investigation of benchmarking pointed to the need to

establish a strategic plan so that the organization could mature and become more effective and
efficient. My research on benchmarking and strategic planning reinforced the organizational
importance to develop a plan first, then execute the plan, as well as the absolute necessity for
executives, managers, and individual contributors to share knowledge and terminology before
real success can be achieved. Therefore, I embarked on creating and cementing the link
among the three groups through the benchmarking objective on my work plan. I envisioned
the execs, the managers, and the individual contributors participating on different planes
during the process of creating a strategic plan for the area. As noted in The landmark MIT
study: Management in the 1990s (1989), "alignment of strategy, business structure, and
information technology is a key management concept for the 1990s" (p. 6).

Because Dell's development organization follows a clearly defined, phased process, I

approached the benchmarking objective as if it were an abbreviated development project with
three phases: planning, implementation, and evaluation. In addition, I subscribed to
Wheelwright and Clark's philosophy of technology planning and strategy:
>>a strategy for technology must confront.., what focus of technical development will be.... In
this context, technology must include the "know-how" the firm needs to create, produce, and
market its products. While some of this knowledge may be based on years of practical
experience, some may be rooted in science and scientific research. Such knowledge is "know-
why"--a deep understanding of why the products or processes work as they do.... What
matters for competition is the firm's technical capability--its ability to use its "know-why" and
its "know-how" to achieve results. (p9. 36) <<

Whelwright and Clark set forth three steps in creating a technology strategy: focus, source,
and timing and frequency of implementation. With these phases/steps guiding our progress,
we started down the road to a strategic plan.

THE PLANNING PHASE

I began to investigate and prepare a plan to satisfy the benchmarking objective by reviewing
the Proceedings of recent STC conferences for benchmarking studies and by consulting with
experts on technical communication organizations from both academic (Staples 1997) and
corporate (Hackos 1997 and Redish 1997) environments. Several people brought Hackos's
book Managing your documentation projects (1994) to my attention during my research, and I
concluded that we could derive more value and practical application from the following three
activities than from actual benchmarking:

1. Assessing Information Development's level of process maturity, measuring and assessing us

in relation to a standard process

2. Establishing an elementary area strategic plan, with specific departmental plans dovetailing
behind it

3. Carefully monitoring and measuring our progress over a 3-year period

* Commission a consultant to evaluate Information Development's maturity level

* Establish a rolling 3-year strategic plan for Information Development

* Establish general organizational plans and directions for each department in Information
Development

* Establish general plans and directions for each business unit's documentation set

* Evaluate and update the area strategic plan once a year and the general plans twice a year

THE IMPLEMENTATION PHASE

To understand what makes information development organizations highly successful, we
commissioned a consultant, Comtech Services, to apply the Information Process-Maturity
Model (Hackos 1994) to our area to determine our level of maturity, provide feedback on our
strengths, and make recommendations for how we could increase our effectiveness within the
corporation. We planned to use the results of the maturity assessment as a springboard to
develop our first strategic plan.
The maturity model assessment process
During the spring of 1996, we began working with Comtech to perform the maturity model
assessment. Some of the challenges we addressed included:

* Educating the consultant's evaluation team about Information Development's organization

structure and corporate responsibilities I shared the general organization structure and
reviewed Information Development's general corporate responsibilities with the consultant's
lead analyst before the consultant team initiated the questionnaire.

* Educating Information Development about what to expect in the assessment

* Each participant would complete a questionnaire and be interviewed by consultant

personnel.

* Information Development staff members would attend an introductory meeting and a

summary meeting.

* The consultant would deliver a formal evaluation.

* Establishing common terminology Although the consultant supplied a glossary of key terms
in the questionnaire, we interpreted other terms differently among ourselves. Therefore, the
Information Development team spent some time agreeing on common definitions before
completing the questionnaire.

* Identifying how many and which people would participate (both from Dell's Information
Development and from the consultant)

The entire Information Development executive staff participated, plus several individual
contributors from each first line department. The individual contributors from the departments
were selected by discipline; the number from each discipline was determined by comparable
size within the area.

* Establishing how many meetings each participant would attend and how much total time
each participant would spend on the assessment All participants attended an initial meeting
where the questionnaires were discussed and individually completed. The management team
attended two meetings with the consultant team, one before and one after the interviews. All
participants attended interview meetings with a consultant team member. The total time per
participant ranged between 2 and 4 hours each.

* Agreeing to how the results would be presented The consultant team created a formal
written report, which was returned to me.

* Determining how the assessment would be conducted

We followed this process:

1. The Information Development team completed and returned questionnaires to the
consultant, who tabulated them before the assessment was conducted.
2. The consultant team conducted interviews with the management team and participants from
each first line department.

3. The consultant team met with the management team before and after the interviews, giving
preliminary results at the final meeting.

4. The consultant team returned to their headquarters and created a comprehensive report
detailing their maturity level assessment, providing an evaluation of strengths, and
recommending how we could increase our effectiveness within the corporation.

Assessment results and Information Development actions

After receiving the Comtech report, the Information Development executive staff read and
evaluated the results. We identified themes of the assessment, the strengths that the consultant
perceived (and our perceptions as to whether these are our strengths), and the actions that the
consultant recommended for increasing our effectiveness within the corporation (Hackos
1996). We then developed an action plan for executives within the product development group
and began working toward a strategic plan for Information Development.

After analyzing the assessment for themes, strengths, and recommendations, the Information
Development executive staff determined that we had six "buckets" of actions to include in the
area's strategic plan:

* Analyzing and staffing to roadmap requirements

* Implementing metrics gathering

* Increasing focus on regional requirements

* Increasing quality assurance

* Evaluating, adding, deleting, and revising internal processes

* Improving employee training and mentoring

Strategic planning process

This effort was the Information Development staff's first attempt to do any strategic planning
for the area. We met as a staff, broke into small brainstorming groups, and used other
techniques on the path to developing our strategy. As suggested by Russo and Shoemaker
(1990), we developed numerous "what if" statements--or thinking frames--in an effort to
establish threads for the strategic plan. "This stimulates a search for an option acceptable
under multiple scenarios or frames. Such choices may be far better bets than those that merely
promise optimum success under conditions that managers believe are the `most likely' future
developments" (p. 57). We brainstormed the "what-if" situations and finally agreed on the
elements or thread that we would place in our strategic plan. We then established a 3-year
plan for each thread.
We created one general strategic plan to cover both employee needs and documentation
content by developing each action "thread" through each quarter for the first year and each 6
months for the following 2 years (see Table 1).

After tying down Information Development's overall strategic plan, we followed up by

developing two types of specific plans:

* Departmental plans covering employee needs such as training and equipment

* Business unit documentation plans covering common and unique needs of each computer-
type documentation set

THE EVALUATION PHASE

At the end of second quarter 1997, we began the evaluation phase of our strategic planning.
We will review the first quarter cell of each thread for the plan, evaluate whether we have met
the plan, and determine whether the action scheduled for third quarter is still appropriate. If
the next quarter's activity is no longer appropriate, we will revise as necessary.

As Max Bazerman (1994) asserts, "The final benefit of developing a strategic

conceptualization concerns transferability.... A key element of developing a strategic
conceptualization is learning to avoid the many biases in individual and group contexts..." (p.
196). Transferring our strategic plan to practice and avoiding biases is our next challenge!

MOVING FORWARD

As goals for the strategic plan, Information Development has targeted improvement in the six
"buckets" of actions identified earlier from the maturity assessment. Following are two
examples from this action list of goals and associated statements that illustrate how
Information Development intends to evolve and increase its maturity level.

Evaluating, adding, deleting, and revising internal processes

The goal is to regularly analyze Information Development's set of processes and take
appropriate action. The very fact that the analysis takes place regularly should facilitate a
continued knowledgebase of process across department members, as well as increased
adherence to the processes. A clear understanding of how and why to change processes--and
of how and why we might "bend" or deviate from a process--should prevent the department
from slipping back into rigidity and encourage flexibility.

Improving employee training and mentoring

We have two goals here.

1. Establish a concrete set of training courses, workshops, and activities.

This training plan will encompass sets of modules crafted for both new members and
employees who have been with the company for a number of years; expectations will be
clearly defined within each employee's work plan for the year. The intention is that the area
will become more proficient with new tools, increase its technological expertise, have a better
understanding and ability with corporate policies and practices, and improve overall
interpersonal skills among department members.

2. Devise a mentoring program with specific deliverables.

This program will clearly spell out the mentor's responsibilities and the timeframe for
accomplishing the deliverables. The goal is to build closer camaraderie, reduce the amount of
time required for new hires to become productive, and increase the effectiveness of current
members of the department.

CONCLUSION

This experience has resulted in more than the creation of a strategic plan for Dell's
Information Development area. All three components (executives, staff, and individual
contributors) of the reporting structure now have a better understanding of our level of
maturity. The area's executive staff has learned the elements of creating a strategic plan.
Information Development has a formalized strategic plan plus departmental and business-unit
documentation plans that complement the strategies.

Going forward, I envision that we will continue using this experience to:

* Refine Information Development's planning expertise.

* Cement the communications link among the three components of the reporting structure.

* Increase the effectiveness of our communications with cross-functional organizations.

* Define a process for improving resourcing and scheduling the documentation effort.

* Improve the collaboration between Information Development and the Business Units for
whom we create customer documentation.

* Establish a framework for facilitating other areas in their quest to establish strategic plans.

Manuscript received 29 May 1997; revised 11 June 1997; accepted 19 June 1997.

REFERENCES

The landmark MIT study: Management in the 1990s. 1989. n.p.: Ernst & Young.

Bazerman, Max H. 1994. Judgment in managerial decision making. New York, NY: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Hackos, JoAnn T. 1996, Dell Computer Corporation maturity model assessment. Denver, CO:
Comtech Services, Inc.

Hackos, JoAnn T. 1994. Managing your documentation projects, New York, NY: John Wiley
& Sons, Inc.

Hackos, JoAnn T. 1997. Personal communication.

Redish, Janice. 1997. Personal communication.

Russo, Edward J., and Paul J. H. Schoemaker. 1990. Decision traps: The ten barriers to
brilliant decision-making and how to overcome them. New York, NY:
Bantam/Doubleday/Dell Publishing Group.

Staples, Katherine. 1997. Personal communication.

Wheelwright, Steven C., and Kim B. Clark. 1992. Revolutionizing product development:
Quantum leaps/h speed, efficiency, and quality. New York, NY: The Free Press.