Each of the elements in Table 1 needs to be evaluated before the SPI initiative starts (typically by the potential SPI project manager, or an assessor) and they need to be continuously evaluated at determined points in time during the SPI project. In the EASE model, an experienced assessor evaluates each sub-element of an element of a component by assigning a weight between 1 and 5. Taking an example from Table 1, under the component “Organizational Readiness”, the “Process Changes” element has as sub-element the “New customer service program” to which the readiness evaluator gives a weight of 5 if at the time of the evaluation there is an active and engaging customer service program ongoing in the organization. On the other hand, if there is no customer service program, the
evaluator assigns a weight of 1 to same sub-element. Once weights wijk (where i = component i, and j = element j, and k = sub-element k) have been assigned, an overall weight Wij is calculated as (ijk)/n) to calculate the element index. The overall component index (Evaluate Organizational Readiness for SPI) is a normalized summation value of the weights of each element.