Every day more companies are realizing that their market, competition, and economics have changed. Supported by advances in technology, companies previously operating within a single country or region now find themselves competing in a global marketplace. Within these enterprises, the information technology (IT) organization must partner with business leaders to transform the organization, develop global business processes, and introduce technology that supports these processes and drives collaboration and innovation on a global basis.

Similar to the way that businesses must adopt a new operating model and grow new skills, IT organizations themselves must adopt new practices and develop new skills to be successful. One of the key skills necessary for organizational growth is the successful management of technology sourcing and acquisition. Creating business solutions today involves obtaining, integrating, and managing skills and services from a variety of sources. These include networking, security, hosting, and disaster recovery, in addition to the more commonly thought of tasks such as design and coding. In many instances, solutions involve ERP, COTS, or BPO deployments, where there is little, if any, actual development activity. Clearly, the operating model of technology organizations has shifted from internal development to acquisition. In fact, recent studies have shown that nearly 75 percent of total global IT budgets are spent on purchases (Forrester 2006). In today’s environment, it is difficult for IT organizations to be competitive unless they excel in acquisition. The SEI has recognized this and responded with the creation of the Capability Maturity Model for Acquisition (CMMI-ACQ).

In creating the CMMI-ACQ, the SEI realized that the process of acquiring technology is significantly different from running an internal development organization. Organizations that acquire technology must build strong relationships with the business, understand business strategy, develop enterprise-level technology architectures, protect intellectual property, and source technology that aligns with all of the above. Effective acquisition requires developing clear requirements, soliciting bids, negotiating scope and price, managing supplier commitment delivery, and ensuring that the business is prepared for the technology. The acquisition team must ensure that suppliers understand the business objective of the acquisition and are aligned to deliver the right value to the business.

At General Motors (GM), we sell and deliver the best transportation products and services to our customers in more than 200 countries around the globe. To accomplish this, our employees and partners collaborate globally on vehicle design, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and sales of more than nine million vehicles annually. In addition, GM has an incredibly robust research organization that is pioneering the development of new technologies, including electric vehicles, hybrid drivetrains, and bio-fuel engines. To ensure that GM maintains a leadership position in the automotive industry, we continuously invest in system capabilities that drive collaboration and innovation throughout GM’s global organization.

The Information Systems and Services (IS&S) organization is responsible for delivering and operating IT globally for GM. The IS&S organization is structured and operates in an acquisition model for the development, operation, and maintenance of all systems. GM has an internal staff responsible for business knowledge, technical strategy, and supplier management. Complementing the GM internal staff, we partner with the world’s best IT suppliers for the actual design, construction, deployment, and operation of technology. This structure ensures that GM employees remain accountable for all aspects of IT performance while leveraging the talent, scalability, and global footprint of multiple suppliers.

When developing the organization structure and processes to support our acquisition model, we searched for frameworks and benchmarking tools to measure our performance against accepted best practices. We reviewed many models and concluded that the existing models focused on best practices and maturity levels for organizations that develop technology. No models or guides were truly appropriate for the customers of the technology. Rather than developing an internal model unique to GM, we leveraged our successful history with CMMI-DEV and partnered with the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) to create a model for the acquirers, or customers, of technology. The SEI offered a wealth of expertise to support this. It contributed internal expertise and access to other major technology acquirers in both the government and commercial areas. Looking forward, the SEI is able to provide training, implementation assistance, and appraisals to support industry adoption.

The result of our partnership with the SEI was the CMMI-ACQ, the model upon which this book is based. This new CMMI model provides GM with a road map to help focus our resources on continuously improving the management of our global environment. The model reinforces key competencies that we must maintain within GM; these include business knowledge, requirement skills, and technical architecture to drive strategy. They also include program management, project management, and contract management, to drive delivery and value for our business.

With IT essential to virtually all aspects of world commerce, this landmark new model can produce broad benefits for businesses in all industries. Businesses that take full advantage of the model can enhance their IT operations and better serve their customers, just as we have done here at GM. Such organizations will understand that although they work with partners to design, develop, and operate systems, they must remain accountable to the business for the entire solution. The CMMI-ACQ describes the necessary practices in requirements, sourcing, architecture management, and project management to support this.

I believe the CMMI-ACQ will be adopted by many organizations and will continue to evolve. Our environment is one in which suppliers must work collaboratively with other suppliers and in which new systems need to integrate into a complex network of other systems. The technologies will continue to evolve, as will supplier and acquirer business models. The CMMI-ACQ will have to keep pace, and we look forward to our continued relationship with the SEI to make sure that the CMMI-ACQ continues to be a valuable tool for GM and other technology acquirers.

I congratulate the various contributors that delivered the CMMI-ACQ maturity model. I also want to commend the authors of this book for taking the CMMI-ACQ and making it more relevant for commercial and government organizations. The authors’ notes provide context and perspective for the reader to relate to these practical concepts. The case studies provide real-world examples that create a vision for organizations to pursue.

Effectively managing technology suppliers, while retaining business relationships and technology strategy, is a competence that virtually all organizations will need to develop. Until now, the resources to guide organization in this development were scarce. The CMMI-ACQ is a valuable guide in this area. It provides a framework based on proven best practices, a path for adopting the practices, and a standard method for assessing your progress and maturity. I commend the SEI for the creation of the model and encourage organizations to utilize it on their journey to acquisition maturity.