People Capability

Maturity Model (PCMM)

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 What is PCMM?

 Attracting, nurturing and retaining skilled and

talented manpower is the aim of PCMM
 Functional road map to achieve organizational
goals
 Integrating workforce development with process
improvement and thereby fostering a culture of
excellence

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 Objective
 To design and implement highly effective
workforce improvement programs
 Helps the organizations to increase their
efficiencies
 Injecting quality into the HR systems
 Establishing an integrate system of practices
that mature through alignment with the
organization’s objectives, performance and
changing needs

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 Origin

 Has been developed by the Software

Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon
University by Dr. Bill Curtis
 These processes that will help the workforce to
perform better and have a higher morale

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 Basic people issues that lead to
employee turnover
 Extreme workload
 Perception of work as unrewarding
 Conflict within team members
 Poor relationship with supervisors
 To address these problems, Curtis thought about
building an institutionalized and standard based
HR frame work, which lead to PCMM

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 The Model
 The term ‘capability’ stood of the level of
knowledge, skills and abilities available to
perform business processes
 The term ‘maturity’ indicates an evolutionary
path of improvement from inconsistent
workforce practices towards a state of
continuous improvement

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 Strategic Objectives
 Designed for software organizations
– Improving the capability of software
organizations by increasing the capability of
the workforce
– Ensuring that the software development
capability is an attribute of an organization
rather than that of few individuals
– Aligning the motivation of individuals
– Retaining human assets

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Assessment Tool
 Acts as a model of assessment that grades companies
on the basis of their workforce practices
 It evaluates companies on a complex set of criteria
involving both the softer human issues like business
environment and employee motivation, and the harder
aspects including compensation levels and turnover
figures
 Guides organizations in selecting high priority
improvement actions based on their current level of
maturity
 It helps them to decide at which level do they stand and
what do they need to do in order to move up the ladder

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 Structure
 PCMM comprises of five evolutionary stages
known as maturity levels
 Each maturity level is well-defined evolutionary
plateau that establishes and institutionalizes a
level of capability for improving the workforce
 Each level is characterized by different set of
goals, practices, and process areas

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 The Five Levels of PCMM
Level 5 Change
Optimizing management

Continuously
Level 4 Capability Improving
Practicable Management practices

Measures and
Level 3 Competency Empowered
Defined Management practices

Level 2 People Competency based

Managed Management practices

Reportable
Level 1 Inconsistent
practices
Initial Management
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 The Initial Level: Maturity level 1

 Characterized by inconsistency in management practices

 No well-defined set of workforce practices and also lacks
talented and trained individual to perform such practices
 Practices performed ritualistically and inconsistently
 Ill-prepared managers and failure in handling the issues
of workers
 Failure in meeting goals an develop its workforce
resulting in emotional detachment of employees
 Demotivated workforce and turnover
 Retention of talented employees becomes a major
concern for organizations at this level
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The Managed Level – Maturity Level 2
 The managers recognize the need of developing
repeatable methods for activities for ensuring efficient
implementation of workforce practices
 Management emphasizes upon need of managers to
accept personal responsibilities of performance of their
own own units
 The organization policies are designed to aid the
organizations in continuously improving the knowledge,
skills, motivation and performance of its workforce
 This is done in order to regularize the practices and
maintain consistency across various units
(contd.)
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 It creates a more rational and motivating work
environment for employees and helps achieve stable
environments for performing work
 The focus at this stage is on making all resources
available, managing individual performance and
coordinating them into effective unit performance
 The process areas include compensation, communication
and coordination, training and development,
performance appraisal and work environment
 Helping the addressing the issue of attrition

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The Defined Level – Maturity Level 3
 After laying down the foundation of basic practices at
the unit level, the organization moves ahead to develop
an integrated infrastructure that binds the capability of
workforce to strategic business objectives
 At this stage the organization intends to develop the
workforce competencies that will help it to achieve its
business objective
 Work force competency can be explained as a ‘cluster of
knowledge, skills and process abilities which acts as
critical pillars for supporting the strategic business plans

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The key process areas that assist the organization at
this level are:
 Participatory culture
 Workgroup development
 Competency analysis and development
 Workforce planning and career development

 Workgroups are developed and given enough autonomy

to perform efficiently and graduated career opportunities
are laid down to motivate and guide individual
development
 Constant reinforcement, rewards help in developing a
sense of responsibility among employees

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The Predictable Level – Maturity Level 4

 In this stage capability is quantitatively managed

 Key process areas at this level are
– mentoring
– organizational capability management
– quantitative performance management
– competency based assets
– empowered workgroups
– competency integration

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 These processes aim at empowering and integrating
workforce competencies and manage performance
quantitatively
 Focus at this level is on reducing variation and
performing predictability
 Management at this stage is better equipped to exploit
the capabilities of its workforce
 Trust and confidence is established between employees
and managers

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 To quantify them, the performance of competency-
based processes is measured and these measures are
used to establish processes performance baseline
 The environment now becomes more predictable and
the organization can make better decisions about
tradeoffs involving workforce capability or processes
performance issues

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The Optimizing Level – Maturity Level 5

 Key focus at this level is continual improvement in the

capabilities of individuals and workgroups
 Development of further improvement plans
 Individuals are encouraged and guided to continuously
analyze their performances and make the desired
improvements
 Individuals level improvements are aligned with the
operating process of workgroups and their units
 Mentors and coaches guide improvements at the level of
individual and workgroup levels
 This results into a culture of performance excellence that
takes roots into the system
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 Indian Experiences
 PCMM develop a sense of responsibility and ownership
of results among employees and help them realize their
stake in the organizational performance
 The primary reason behind Indian companies adopting it
is the belief of having a highly skilled and talented
workforce, which is the greatest asset
 The retention and motivation and development of
employees were major challenges for Indian firms which
is addressed by PCMM

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 TCS

 World’s first organization to attain level 4 of

PCMM
 In August, 2001, the companies four centers at
Gurgoan, Noida, Kolkatta and Chennai were
awarded the PCMM level 4 certification
 Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie
Mellon University

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1. TCS looked for the initial volunteers across centers
that could contribute to the preparations
2. Idea attracted a lot of interest from various centers
3. Finally, four centers could be assessed owing to the
bandwidth and time availability of the assessing team
4. The company began standardizing the practices for
staffing, communication work environment,
performance management, training and development
and compensation

(contd.)

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 For level 3, TCS concentrated on competency analysis, by
documenting competencies in the form of knowledge,
skills and attributes, each of which had well defined
measurable levels
 Authorized people regularly reviewed the competencies
of workforce and intranet and knowledge management
systems were set in place for capturing and using those
competencies in the best possible manner
 Competency development plans involving current and
strategic workforce planning, were prepared and senior
management were assigned the responsibilities of their
implementation
 These plans aided in making decisions for recruitment
and training issues
(contd.)
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 Well-defined career paths with graduated career
opportunities were laid out, which were periodically
reviewed by the executives
 The practices ad procedures, along with the experiences
were documented in procedure manuals, process
handbooks
 Project team meetings, newsletter, open house sessions,
status reports etc were used to communicating the
organization’s performance

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 For the fourth level of predictability and competency
development, the organization has various practices
involving competency integration, empowered work
groups, quantitative performance management and
organizational capability management etc.
 The organization defined quality policy and used various
methods like TCS website, cubicle distribution docs,
emails

 Practices like PAL, eKMS, reuse artifacts etc helped in

capturing and developing their competency based assets

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 Critical competencies were identified and quantitative
models of performance were developed in basis of trend
charts, metric trend analysis reports, causal trend
analysis etc
 Mentoring was promoted to get the plans implemented
efficiently
 After achieving level 4 certification, it attained the Level-
5 certification in September 2004

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 Wipro Technologies
 First organization to achieve PCMM level 5-certification in
December 2001
 Decision of PCMM taken in an internal meeting when the
company realized the possibility of becoming a ‘HR No.1’
 Various innovative initiatives like creating a ‘competency
dictionary, conducting gap analysis of HR practices and
implementing 360 degree feedback
 Initiative of PCMM is aimed at building ‘people leaders’
 Well-structured induction/training programs, e-learning
initiatives and ‘training on demand’ initiatives were floated
across the organization to take care of the training needs
of employees
(contd.)
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 These steps made the company eligible for the second
maturity level

 A well-structured career path designing, opportunity for

shifting to either functional or technical specialization,
Employee perception surveys practices were taken up
and aligned with organization’s strategic objectives

 Hence attained the PCMM maturity level 3-certification

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 Focus to key process areas of level 4
 Focus on mentoring leadership qualities in employees
and empowering them to take decisions, which helped in
capability management
 Wipro Leaders Program with various options like Entry
Leaders Program, Business Leaders Program and
Strategic Leaders Program were launched to enable
employees to face challenges in their career path
 Training, coaching, exposure, delegation of authority,
counseling and value certification etc. were initiated to
groom employees

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 PCMM, level 5,
 Streamlining manpower planning and HR policies and
committed 5 percent of overall manpower cost toward
employee training
 Gaps were identified using gap analysis
 Assessment team consisting of 7 line managers, 3 HR
staff and 2 quality staff
 Over 100 employees worked for a period of two years fo
fulfill the requirements of achieving highest level of
PCMM certification
 December, 2001, achieved the PCMM level 5 -
certification

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 Underlying principles of PCMM
1. In mature organizations, talent pool capability is
directly related to business performance
2. Talent pool capability is a competitive issue and a
source of strategic advantage
3. Talent capability must be identified in relation to the
organization’s strategic business objectives
4. Knowledge-intense work shifts the focus from job
elements to people competencies
5. Capability can be measure and improved at multiple
levels, including individuals, workgroups, people
competencies, and the organization

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6. An organization should invest in improving the capability
of those people competencies that are critical to its core
competency as a business
7. Operational management is responsible for the capability
of the talent pool
8. The improvement of talent pool capability can be pursued
as a process composed from proven practices and
procedures
9. The organization is responsible for providing competency
and career improvement opportunities, while individuals
are responsible for taking advantage of them
10.Since technologies and organizational forms evolve
rapidly, organization must continually evolve their people
practices and develop new people competencies

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