by Jessica Otunuya | Feb 6, 2024
About the Engagement
At the onset of the 2020 pandemic, a state-level agency received the task to distribute funds from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), acting as a grantee in the nationwide initiative that amassed approximately $46.5 billion. The program aimed to deliver substantial economic relief to assist households with low and moderate income who were at risk of homelessness or housing instability by offering support with rental arrears, temporary rental assistance, and utility arrears.
Business Problem
The reporting analytics team required a centralized tool to analyze data for over 100,000+ applications, which equated to $1.25 billion in funding. The reporting analytics team was overwhelmed with data dumps, and how to effectively analyze and report data to leadership; therefore, the engagement team was tasked with developing an enhanced data reporting process to ensure pre-payment determinations were made in a timely, concise, and consistent manner.
Challenges
The reporting team had to analyze thousands of applications to determine payment eligibility without a clearly structured, centralized data-verse. This inability resulted in team members inefficiently disseminating system user data and delays in briefing pre-payment and fraud related statuses to leadership.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team worked across a series of targeted areas to address the business problem in a timely, concise, and consistent manner. These areas included
- Requirements Gathering & Data Management: Completed a current-state assessment of reporting status; worked directly with reporting teams to gather detailed requirements for various reports; created and maintained daily reports for pre-payment quality checks and payment determinations.
- Internal Communication: Standardized check-in structure to include key topics like project progress and escalations; standardized agendas, notetaking and action step captured; defined expectations for performance indicators and shared accountability across the agency.
- Training, Learning, & Development: Conducted cross-functional training to ensure staff knowledge and ability to perform pre-payment report generations and refreshes; conducted regular demos to ensure business teams are trained on technical system capabilities; developed a system for project management to prioritize and implement business requirements for operational teams.
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.