Overview

I am IS: Information / Integration / Innovation • Systems / Services / Solutions

Network by Juan Pablo Bravo from the Noun ProjectCan’t afford a full-time, permanent information services leader but need expert help setting information technology strategy and managing operations? Need a clean reboot of an IT staffing, infrastructure, or process mess? Leveraging 25 years of technical and organizational leadership experience, I provide Virtual-Fractional-Interim Chief Information-Integration-Innovation Officer (“CIO at Your Service“) management consulting on both a part-time/retained and project basis to cost-effectively deliver strategic, technical, and operations leadership. While I can ably aid almost any organization, I specialize in educational institutions and ed-tech providers, bringing 20 years of leadership experience in K-20 education institutions and startups.

Approach

Strategy + Systems • People + Process

Flow Chart by Michael Wohlwend from the Noun ProjectPlagued by poor process? Avoidable errors or irritating inefficiencies costing you time, money, and credibility? I enjoy designing scalable solutions to pernicious problems, integrating strategy and systems with people and process. As a senior member of the American Society for Quality, I bring Six Sigma certification and a suite of quality systems/process management tools to bear on measuring, diagnosing, and improving organizational processes. I also bring a pragmatic and people-oriented approach to implementation to ensure outcomes are both efficient and effective.

My suite of services includes …

Strategy

Organizations must look both inside (mission & goals) and outside (competition & environmental forces) in formulating successful strategy.
  • Business strategy advising: Chart a clear course for your organization with business strategy advising employing best-practices frameworks. Specializations in education, non-profit, & early-stage startups.
  • Strategic planning facilitation: Achieve organizational alignment with facilitated strategic planning, including scenario development, collaborative vision and mission creation, goals, objectives, project, & task definition, roles and responsibility assignment.

Systems

Information and communications systems have become essential to boosting productivity and enabling innovation.
  • IT auditing: Protect your organization & prioritize improvements with an IT infrastructure & service management operations assessment, including a comprehensive inventory of existing systems, processes, & services, identification & prioritization of needed improvements, and a goal-aligned action plan and budget.
  • Procurement management: Get the best value for your investment with independent, vendor-neutral technical systems evaluation & implementation, including a needs assessment, Request For Proposals writing, & vendor response management.
  • Project management: Eliminate business continuity gaps & missed deadlines with technical systems implementation project planning, coordination, & oversight.
  • Application requirements & architecture: Turn vague intuitions into the structured user stories, concise wireframes, data models, and other software specifications needed to get your organization’s unique needs with custom application development met when off-the-shelf solutions don’t fit.

People

Achieving an organization’s mission requires getting the right people on the bus then aligning their efforts with effective leadership & efficient management.
  • Technical staff recruitment: Find the nice + knowledgeable nerds you need with expert IT staff/leadership recruitment, including staffing needs assessment, position description development, job posting & recruitment, candidate screening & skills testing, reference checks & finalist recommendations.
  • Job design: Create a high-performance team by clearly apportioning roles & responsibility using a structured process to capture tasks, identify workloads, assign responsibility, & automatically generate accurate position descriptions.
  • Application development management: Coral coders to implement software solutions that meet your organization’s unique needs using agile development techniques, detailed and precise work breakdown, and clear communication.

Process

Since people can come and go, it’s essential to maintain well-designed workflows, as process predicts product over the long-haul.
  • Process improvement: Optimize efficiency and effectiveness with business process redesign, leveraging Lean / Six Sigma quality management tools such as process & value-stream mapping, root-cause & Pareto analysis, cycle time, 5S, mistake-proofing.
  • Process automation: Increase productivity with IT-enabled solutions to automate your manual business processes.
  • Work standardization: Increase efficiency and eliminate avoidable errors by integrating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) & detailed work instructions into everyday workflow.