While there are many different operational definitions of an improvement framework, the term is utilized in this series to represent a structured set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices which can be used to describe, model, and understand behaviors within an organization. The word structure is used in this definition to emphasize that the interfaces between the elements of a framework are designed to organize and optimize the information within the framework for ease of use and understanding. In this context, an enterprise governance framework can be considered an integrated strategy for developing, managing, understanding, aligning, and improving policies, processes, and behaviors within an enterprise.

Often, such governance frameworks are populated with best practices, though such wholesale adoption can be problematic (for example, see When best is not enough). In the context of this definition, a number of existing frameworks and supporting components have been developed by industry groups and are already in use to varying degrees within most groups. This set of frameworks is provided from many different sources, including EIA, ISO, INCOSE, NIST (Malcolm Baldrige), the British Standards institute (ITIL), the Lean Aerospace Initiative, the IEEE, the Project Management Institute, the Software Engineering Institute (SW-CMM, CMMI), the FAA (iCMM), Motorola and GE (Six Sigma), Microsoft (MSF), and ETH (which provides the meta-model represented above).

Many of these frameworks have been applied to different businesses under a variety of circumstances. Some are targeted to selected types of businesses or subsets of businesses (for example, engineering, or IT), whereas others are intended to be more generally applicable. In some situations, compliance with selected frameworks is a business requirement levied through regulations or procurement procedures. In other situations, compliance may be perceived to offer a discriminator with competition. In still other circumstances, such frameworks have been used to benchmark internal performance relative to external organizations, address performance problems, or establish a roadmap for process improvement activities. For an example of browsable content for a framework on this site, see this CMMI material.

Selecting the 'best' framework based upon established criteria and applying it within your own organization might seem like an attractive strategy within the above context. However, increasingly, organizations are finding it difficult to limit exposure to a single framework. Because different countries, customers, and industries have their own 'preferred' framework, a group may begin to attach itself to a single 'preferred' framework, but then find itself having to demonstrate compliance with a second, or third. Organizations which must deal with multiple elements of these frameworks are increasingly finding themselves in what has been described in the literature as the 'frameworks quagmire'.

Several lessons are clear to users of multiple frameworks from these different sources. The first lesson is that there is substantial overlap between individual frameworks. The second lesson is that reconciliation of this overlap (especially when interpreted in different ways by different consultants or appraisers) can be quite difficult, and can introduce significant variability into approaches as the frameworks are applied in parallel. The third lesson is that there is a huge cadre of consultants willing and anxious to apply these frameworks, often at considerable cost. The fourth lesson is that the application of any of these frameworks does not guarantee business results. Because of these challenges, many organizations try to limit their focus to a single framework system. However, this is often challenging, especially when organizations interface with other partners, suppliers, or customers which use a different system. It is clearly in an enterprise's interest to establish their own governance framework which both insulates the enterprise from and eases reconciliation with existing or new external frameworks. At the same time, an enterprise's framework should be selective in adopting the unique features of a framework that offer value to them, while enhancing its ability to add additional unique features (at either the project or enterprise level) that provide a competitive advantage and improve business performance. Such a framework also allows development to proceed simultaneously in a 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' fashion, without ending up with concepts, ideas, and writings which create confusion, conflicts, or rework.