Various models and standards have been developed and are used throughout the world to assess the capability of organizations in various domains, including development, services, security and safety. While such models and standards have mostly been used to assess compliance and obtain a certification, they can also be used to improve and to deploy processes that exploit the opportunities an organization has of meeting its business objectives and to prevent the potential problems to which it is exposed from occurring and degenerating into crises. Data from a set of 40 comprehensive assessments conducted over 10 years, and spanning Europe, North America and South America, was compiled and subsequently used to better understand the factors at stake in organizations developing products and services relying on Information Technology. Each appraisal was performed in a separate organization. In particular, some anomalies were detected that warranted more in-depth analysis. Even though correlation was observed between mature processes and the quality of resulting products and services, it was not true for all cases. Good quality products and services sometimes originated from organizations having relatively low maturity processes whereas in other cases, organizations characterized by more mature processes generated disappointing results. Other models were subsequently used in the emergency management, resources management and information security fields to verify the validity of obtained results. The critical threshold associated with the likelihood of experiencing problems was found to be approximately 40%. A project or an organization cannot sustain such a likelihood of experiencing problems for any significant duration relative to the planned or current activities. A likelihood of problems equal to 50% would correspond to a project or an organization operating at random, and if such were the case, it would be wishful thinking to expect any successful outcome over a significant period of time. Speaker(s): Mr. Louis A. Poulin, Room: EV003-309, Bldg: Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, Concordia University, 1515 Ste. Catherine West, MONTREAL, Quebec, Canada, H3G 1M8