Maybe diplomacy is your top skill. Maybe you have a keen technical eye and a penchant for problem-solving. Maybe you’re a practiced project manager, a premier training specialist, and even a data scientist at night while running your organization during the day.
First off: congratulations to you, because that’s an extraordinary medley of skills. Second: you’re still right in the middle of the challenge, which makes an objective view impossible.
That’s why more and more organizations are opting for an Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) partner when they tackle tough technology and data problems.
Complex projects create vulnerabilities
One of the frustrations we most often run into when clients turn to us for IV&V is that technology projects get unwieldy fast, and because vendors have a massive information advantage, the organization leaders who need their help struggle to find clear paths forward through the inevitable (and quickly overwhelming) surprises and issues that enter any project.
Meanwhile, data and technology undertakings are becoming exponentially more complex, even for the small business owner who may have been happily getting by on yesterday’s technology until a shift in business strategy, processes, or the technology itself necessitated more. And for enterprise organizations or government agencies, the immensity of the operation adds to the difficulty of successful implementation—more stakeholders, more (and more varied) needs, more potential roadblocks and competing opinions.
Small wonder so many organizations put off a change until they just can’t.
IV&V requires a neutral, well-informed team
What makes IV&V so incredibly valuable is that it surmounts not just the knowledge gap from client to vendor—from both directions—but provides a neutral third-party for insight, project oversight, and facilitating the difficult conversations with finesse. Our objective in any IV&V engagement is to enable wins from every side: We work with vendors to head off issues and keep the project moving, and we closely collaborate with the client so that their needs are met, their concerns are addressed, and ultimately their project is not just implemented but embraced.
It’s not that any one of us has every skill required to make such alchemy. It’s that we provide a team of experts in each area required to bring a technology, data, or digital transformation undertaking to life. So if we aren’t the ones designing and implementing your project, we’re still bringing that insight and experience to identifying potential issues, solving problems, and keeping your project moving on schedule to a successful completion.
Helping FSSA implement an especially challenging solution
We’ve worked with organizations of all sizes to help shepherd a range of projects. To get an idea what that looks like, check out the details of our work.
FSSA serves as a funding agency for health care and social services, administering services to more than 1.5 million Hoosiers through eight divisions, each with numerous subagencies. That’s a herculean job that a lot of people depend on, and so undertaking to implement a new case management solution was a tricky proposition.
At various points, FSSA’s extremely complex project relied upon more than ten vendors. Having a neutral third party to coordinate that range of objectives and talents proved crucial to accomplishing the client’s goals. Our team worked hard to build trust, mitigate risk, and resolve issues to reach the best outcome for FSSA.
Find the details of that project here. And learn more about our approach to IV&V.
