by Christina Magriples | Mar 28, 2024
About the Engagement
After New York’s five super storms in 2012, the state created a temporary agency to distribute 4.4 billion dollars in federal funds to homeowners, small businesses, and municipalities. From the start, technology served as the foundation for this nascent disaster recovery organization. With continually shifting policies, strategies, and goals, the Information Technology (IT) team was forced to create a complex set of applications for processing, analyzing, reporting, and storing critical data and documents for dozens of programs.
Business Problem
The clients’ technology solutions and processes were developed quickly, and in silos because they needed to immediately begin releasing funds/benefits. Therefore, the client sought a partner who could re-engineer the complex architecture of dozens of disparate systems that needed to be maintained or rearchitected.
Challenges
A consistent challenge across the agency was a lack of centralized strategies, techniques, and frameworks which presented unique complexities. Examples of these include varying customer service and support strategies for both staff and applications, varying frameworks and processes (or the lack thereof) resulting in missing quality assurance and quality control procedures for critical applications and departments, and inconsistent monitoring and maintenance of software through the software development lifecycle.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team provided technology strategy and execution services support to the client’s Chief Information Officer, which included the following:
- Current-state and future-state IT organizational assessment to determine and implement technology change management initiatives to improve technology delivery.
- Future-state business architecture to help determine future-state IT organizational capabilities, roles and responsibilities and staffing plans.
- Portfolio and project management support, including software architecture and design, business requirements development, testing and release management support.
- Comprehensive training modules to create structure and internal capabilities in technology delivery for project managers, business analysts, and developers.
Through the engagement team’s strategy and execution support, the client’s IT team has significantly improved its service delivery capabilities, including on-time delivery of projects and improved customer service. This work has helped train and empower the client’s IT team to be more customer-centric and improve delivery of services.
by Christina Magriples | Jan 31, 2024
About the Engagement
In June 2013, following the occurrences of Hurricanes Irene and Lee, and Superstorm Sandy, a state-level disaster recovery organization was created to focus on recovery and rebuilding efforts for effective areas of New York State. The agency’s aid focused on four areas: housing recovery, small business, community reconstruction and infrastructure. They were tasked with distributing billions in federal funds to homeowners, small businesses, and municipalities.
Business Problem
The clients’ technology solutions and processes were developed quickly, and in silos because they needed to immediately begin releasing funds/benefits. Therefore, the client sought a partner who could re-engineer the complex architecture of dozens of disparate systems that needed to be maintained or rearchitected.
Challenges
The common challenge across the agency was a lack of centralized strategies, techniques, and frameworks which presented unique complexities. Examples of these include varying customer service and support strategies for both staff and applications, varying frameworks and processes (or the lack thereof) resulting in missing quality assurance and quality control procedures for critical applications and departments, and maintaining varying agile, hybrid-agile and waterfall software development lifecycle approaches, since multiple systems, or lack of, were used daily, but were not maintained appropriately.
Project Impacts and Outcomes:
The engagement team led the complex change management and training initiatives within the technology team and supported or led the new software development process (design to implementation) for dozens of applications. The team initiated the engagement in the role of IT organization current-state assessment and future-state recommendations, while also supporting the implementation of numerous software. This created the optimal environment and structure to enable agile delivery, to truly understand the on-the-ground needs, and to pivot as the client’s needs changed. This assessment also included focusing on external program-facing initiatives – the process points that required collaboration and communication between the technology and business.
The team provided agency-tailored technical portfolio, project management, business analysis and quality assurance services, including strategy, training, coaching and hands-on delivery. By the end of the project, project managers and business analysts were maintaining a consistent hybrid-agile framework, leading to on-time and prioritized software delivery. Quality assurance and testing was thorough and comprehensive, ensuring applications were delivered bug-free. The IT team maintained a transparent and aligned portfolio of initiatives.
by Jessica Otunuya | Jan 31, 2024
About the Engagement
In June 2013, following the occurrences of Hurricanes Irene and Lee, and Superstorm Sandy, a state-level disaster recovery organization was created to focus on recovery and rebuilding efforts for effective areas of New York State. The agency’s aid focused on four areas: housing recovery, small business, community reconstruction and infrastructure.
Business Problem
In the beginning, the agency’s goal was to deliver benefits to citizens as quickly as possible. As a result, business processes and business requirements were developed with the best knowledge and understanding at the time. These original processes and requirements were adequate but not the optimal business processes and technology.
The engagement team identified three areas of focus: current-state assessment and analysis, future-state requirements and optimization, and change management, recognizing that software development processes were not formalized and therefore created challenges upstream and downstream.
Challenges
The first challenge was managing a large group of stakeholders with competing priorities, interests, and understanding of pain points. Another challenge was maintaining varying agile, hybrid-agile and waterfall software development lifecycle approaches, since multiple systems, or lack of, were used inefficiently. The final challenge was staff proficiency with systems and this challenge showcased the need to develop strategies to support staff in their use of systems and applications.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team worked across various programs, each with multiple departments, and shared services to gain an understanding of the existing pain points with user flows and the system interfaces to understand current-state processes. From there, the team developed future-state user flows and system requirements (e.g., screens, field requirements, etc.) with the goal of optimized workflows. To support staff learning, usage, and understanding the team implemented training and presentations with associated documentation for reference. Staff were trained in quality assurance and quality check procedures. Following this, the team worked with the agency to architect the ideal technology solution, which resulted in an organizational shift to more consumer-driven software development business processes. To complement the future-state recommendations for optimization, the team created a change management roadmap and detailed plan. The team enabled the client to actualize the vision and meet the goal of confidently delivering software enhancements – meeting programmatic needs, on-time, and within budget. Through implementation of the change management initiatives across the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), the client’s improved internal processes have enabled staff to ensure better communication and efficient workflows. In addition, the enterprise software and underlying technology are flexible and robust for ongoing needs. Ultimately, the client is able to meet programmatic needs on time and on budget.
by Jessica Otunuya | Jan 31, 2024
About the Engagement
The mayor’s office in one of the largest cities in the nation created a program to support minority and/or women-owned businesses (M/WBE). The program’s goal was to empower and support minority and women-owned businesses to foster economic growth, diversity, and inclusivity within the city’s business landscape.
Business Problem
The mayor’s office identified that there was a significant challenge within the M/WBE certification process. The engagement team’s goal was to identify and alleviate pain points that hindered efficient certification for minority and women-owned businesses. The complexity of the process often discouraged potential applicants and slowed down the growth of M/WBEs in the city.
Challenges
Some of the challenges that the engagement team experienced were administrative bottlenecks, unclear documentation requirements, and delays in the evaluation and approval process. In addition, the engagement team had to create and present the benefits of journey mapping. This process included identifying and defining key customers and services, identifying customer pain points, assessing strengths and areas for growth to improve customer experience and empowering critical experiences and perspectives that were underrepresented or misunderstood.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team collaborated with the mayor’s office to build comprehensive journey maps, or data-driven visual representations of what customers experience (e.g., pain and love points) in their interactions with an organization. These maps covered the end-to-end lifecycle of a M/WBE’s experience working in the city, from applying for certification to bidding and winning contracts with the city. As a result of the engagement team’s efforts, the project achieved several notable outcomes:
- Business Participation: The simplified and user-friendly application process attracted a higher number of applicants, reflecting increased interest and engagement in the M/WBE Program.
- Diversity and Inclusivity: By addressing the pain points in the certification process, the M/WBE program fostered greater diversity and inclusivity within the city’s business landscape, aligning with the overarching goals of the mayor’s initiative.
- Stakeholder Satisfaction: Stakeholders, including M/WBE owners, program administrators, and city officials, reported satisfaction with recommendations outlined by the engagement team, communicating that this effort will drive to improved communication, transparency, and efficiency.
by Christina Magriples | Nov 9, 2023
About the Engagement
In June 2013, following the occurrences of Hurricanes Irene and Lee, and Superstorm Sandy, a state-level disaster recovery organization was created to focus on recovery and rebuilding efforts for effective areas of New York State. The agency’s aid focused on four areas: housing recovery, small business, community reconstruction and infrastructure.
Business Problem
The agency’s division for organizational systems & performance is responsible for delivering agency-wide technical needs from infrastructure and software to maintenance and technical support. As the agency matured and needs became increasingly complex and intertwined, there was a need to create stronger and more disciplined portfolio management, project management and business analysis capabilities and support the agency in critical technical decisions.
Challenges
The common challenge across the agency was a lack of centralized strategies, techniques, and frameworks which presented unique complexities. Examples of these include varying customer service and support strategies for both staff and applications, varying frameworks and processes (or the lack thereof) resulting in missing quality assurance and quality control procedures for critical applications and departments, and maintaining varying agile, hybrid-agile and waterfall software development lifecycle approaches, since multiple systems, or lack of, were used daily, but were not maintained appropriately.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team provided agency-tailored technical portfolio, project management, business analysis and quality assurance services, including strategy, training, coaching and hands-on delivery. By the end of the project, the duties of the staff were defined and understood. Project Managers and Business Analysts were maintaining a consistent hybrid-agile framework, leading to on-time and prioritized software delivery, which resulted in high levels of quality assurance, thorough and comprehensive testing, and ensured applications were delivered bug-free to the end users. Customer service and communication were consistent and very well received by other departments. The division maintained a transparent and aligned portfolio of initiatives. The division leadership and agency executives made clear and strategic technical decisions that were aligned with core priorities.