Our Building Blocks for Solutions
No two consulting projects are alike. But all projects share the same fundamental concepts. That's why we try to apply the following critical "building blocks" to every client solution. Vision and Strategy Development is the way an agency explains their direction and why they do what they do. Governance and Organization Design is about who needs to be involved in meeting the vision. Process Redesign and Optimization is about the how - the steps needed to complete something, and is really the pre-requisite to creating any types of artifacts. Performance Management is about what needs to be measured to ensure success. And Technology Enablement and IT Solutions is about how it all comes together - how technology is used to solve a mission problem (and not just doing technology for technologies sake).
Why are these building blocks important to our solutions? Each of these blocks can be applied to any of our solutions. For example, if we are building an Enterprise Architecture, we need to know the vision behind the agency direction, what resources they will have in place to make the decisions, what type of process and artifacts are required, how performance will be measured, and finally how technology can be used to support the EA. If we are supporting the creation of a performance-based acquisition, we need to similarly need to understand the acquisition strategy, the governance in place to support the acquisition, the process in which an agency needs to follow PBA, service level agreements to measure performance, and possibly the use of technology to help monitor contract performance. The same applies for running a large program or for making investment decisions.
Vision and Strategy Development: the "Why"
Having a vision and strategy is all about getting to where you want to go in the long term. Beyond “fixing what is broken,” a well-defined visioning and strategic planning process helps organizations align to mission requirements, inspire employees around programs and more easily garner stakeholder support. It’s the thread that ties everything together. Often when our clients approach us to improve strategy in one area, such as acquisition, we discover challenges and impacts in other areas as well.
How do vision and strategy development play out in Octo’s client engagements? For enterprise architecture (EA), we use vision and strategy as the basis of how target-state decisions are made. In portfolio management, we align criteria for making investment decisions to strategic goals. We view strategies as the starting point for any downstream acquisition activities. And having a clear understanding of a program’s vision is a key step in program management.
TopGovernance and Organization Design: the "Who"
Governance is about understanding the balance between the demands of your customers and the capabilities you offer. Octo helps organizations rethink how they are structured and staffed to address their visions for:
- EA—We assist clients with architecture review boards or centers of excellence for initiatives such as solution architecture.
- Portfolio management—We guide the critical investment review boards that apply processes and evaluation criteria to decisions.
- Acquisitions—For organizations that have a large number of acquisitions, we help with acquisition governance boards and governance/approval processes.
- Project management—We work with clients to create the robust project management office usually required for any large initiative.
Process Redesign and Optimization: the "How"
Organizations that struggle with EA, portfolio management, acquisition or program management often can trace their challenges back to either a lack of baseline processes or bottle-necks and inefficiencies in the process they do have.
At Octo, process defines everything we do—the steps we follow and the decisions we make. We view processes as “purpose-based” (to keep the eyes on the objective) and well defined.
When guiding clients through process redesign and optimization in their own organizations, we help them understand that activities don’t occur in isolation, how shortcomings in one area can impact another and how solid processes are key to any improvement initiative.
We define processes in a number of ways, using swim-lane diagrams, UML diagrams and standards that are more aligned to specific modeling products. Regardless of how a process is modeled, we help clients see its decomposition to lower-level activities and grasp what is being done, by whom and the information needed to support it.
After our clients understand their current processes and how they are related, they have the foundation to explore process optimization and automation initiatives.
TopPerformance Management: the "What"
Effective performance management is about collecting metrics and knowing what to do with that information to make management decisions. Every aspect of what Octo does has a performance component to it—knowing the criteria for success, how to measure that criteria and what to do if key metrics aren’t met
Performance management programs differ depending on an organization’s vision and strategy. For example, an EA program to reduce an organization’s costs and technical footprint might measure the elimination of specific technologies compared with the metrics for an EA program defining reusable service-oriented architecture services.
TopTechnology Enablement and IT Solutions: the Final Step
Only after an organization has a clear vision, established processes, strong governance and an understanding of needs to be measured should it make technology investments. Technology can't replace a lack of vision, process, governance or metrics.
However, once the right building blocks above are in place, technology can serve as a highly effective enabler, providing:
- EA programs with modeling capabilities and a repository for artifacts and modeling capabilities
- Portfolio management programs with automated mechanisms to score, evaluate and track investments
- Complex acquisition initiatives with dashboards for service level agreements
- Large programs with collaboration and tracking capabilities for program management
RESULTS MATTER