Many organizations are adopting a number of different governance frameworks to assess gaps within their organizations with respect to world-class organizations, and to focus and plan their own improvement efforts. Unfortunately, many of these frameworks provide substantial overlap with respect to their subject matter. This situation has been reviewed here, and the trend for the this has escalated since that publication with the release of multiple frameworks for information technologies (ITIL, CoBIT), security (ISO 17799, SSE CMM), and program management / engineering (CMMI, OPM3).

These frameworks vary widely in their acceptance into use, maturity, fundamental nature, and infrastructure support. It is natural for organizations to gravitate towards frameworks that best establish their own credibility with customers, create an advantage with respect to competition, and are easiest to use in supporting their own strategic goals. However, when these organizations are embedded in larger parent groups, or are geographically distributed across multiple sites, they are often faced with conducting multiple assessments to support goals originating from multiple levels and for multiple purposes.

This project is an exploration of this situation on an on-going basis and the potential mechanisms for resolving the challenges which this multiple framework situation creates for organizations. It also intends to build on the opportunity to create a common taxonomy and criteria set for organizational best practices within this context.