IT initiatives grow evermore complex, and success requires good decision making and tight coordination of activities. That’s just what we do; our experienced team provides you the right blend of services to manage process and quality – and to deliver successful solutions.
We view complex initiatives as spanning six, distinct domains of expertise - these are shown below in our service model as a hierarchy of six discs; each disc depending on work done in the discs below it. We provide you requisite services in every one of these domains of expertise.
Finally, we can help you from start to finish, and anywhere in between – we’re committed to making smart decisions and achieving the expected results. You’ll find us personal and committed – your success really is a very big deal for us.
The delivery of major initiatives through the coordination of many individual projects.
Successful program management requires a blend of disciplines, such as planning, resource management, change leadership, technical competencies, technical architecture, system development methodologies, risk management, and team facilitation.
Here’s a sample of our successfully completed programs:
A focused endeavor that produces a solution; it is defined by its duration, budget, milestones, tasks, and resources.
Your project depends on your selecting the right project manager; our project managers are smart, capable and experienced.
We have an extensive track record of successful projects (which is the foundation for our success with program management). Some examples:
The art of tracking, prioritizing, and coaching all of a department’s projects.
Assembling a project portfolio provides a particularly good diagnostic when there are concerns regarding the timeliness or quality of a department’s project delivery. With ongoing management of the project portfolio, our clients see a myriad of long-term benefits:
Activities that enable and sustain comprehensive changes required of leadership and stakeholders.
Fear of, and resistance to, change is a natural reaction to the uncertainty that comes with innovation; without a compelling case for change and a steady effort to build momentum, major initiatives often become paralyzed (and often at vulnerable moments.) That’s why change leadership is a critical success factor when delivering large initiatives; and why we include a change leadership project whenever we provide program management.
We work with you to form a change leadership team and engage in five concurrent tracks of activity:
To make proficient by instruction, in order to achieve a specific mission or objective.
With effective training, your team gains the skills and confidence to move forward with new systems. Often, training is a key factor for team members to embrace change.
We have dynamic and caring trainers, with substantial experience delivering successful results for large law firms. They will work with you to:
We generally can scope a training solution to your needs and budget. For example, we can perform all training, or we can help you identify team members to be internal trainers and “train the trainer”; and we can train globally by traveling to your sites or by leveraging webinars and remote conferencing tools.
Minimizing both the likelihood and impact of bad things happening to an initiative.
Large initiatives tend to fail, generally due to program management lapses and serious issues emerging at the wrong times. We address the latter by focusing on the early identification of potential issues (risks), so that we can proactively monitor and mitigate them. In effect, we achieve success by avoiding surprises.
To achieve this, we form and chair a Risk Management Committee to:
Asking good questions, determining objectives, and planning for achievement.
We found our strategy work on achieving two key outcomes. First, we apply analytical rigor so you can decide exactly what to accomplish and clearly explain why to stakeholders. Second, we produce very detailed plans that incorporate everyone involved.
We offer broad expertise with technology strategy, including for:
The structured decision making processes, prior to implementation, which maximize the return on a technology investment.
Solution design and selection involves a series of complex decisions – and you’ll be living with the consequences for years. We believe good results come from making good decisions at each step, and that bad results often come from trying to skip steps.
That’s why we follow a rigorous, structured approach to this. Once you’ve made the strategic decision to proceed, we open our library of methodologies to you and collaborate on a selection process suitable to the solution and your needs. The following are common steps in the process:
Information Security protects information, an enterprise asset, by ensuring its appropriate confidentiality, availability and integrity. Secure infrastructure provides services while meeting information protection objectives, and can be a foundation for competitive innovation.
We understand security. Prior to founding Ascendant Services, our principal was nominated for Partner in an information security practice at Deloitte & Touche; additionally, several members of our team hold CISSP certifications. We often fill the CSO role for our small to mid-sized clients.
We believe information protection is an essential objective for IT management – and we build it into everything we design, procure, and configure.
As an excellent way to start working with us, consider an information protection assessment, which are short engagements with immediately usable results. Our methodology takes a management perspective to security, and produces results that are readily understandable and actionable by the executive team.
We provide highly qualified project managers to lead selection and implementation of secure, enterprise infrastructure. Our project work includes:
Managing a department or team during transitions, such as: staff turnover, reorganizations, turnarounds, acquisitions, expansions, and other periods of extraordinary change.
Inevitably, circumstances arise and a client faces a leadership gap of weeks to months. These gaps are generally stressful for everyone, and can excessively consume other executive’s time.
We believe that coasting without leadership often yields declining productivity and quality; and minimally “filling the gap” contributes little towards positive momentum. Also, you miss a real opportunity for constructive change - with no incumbent in place, you can readily take a fresh look at mission, processes, staffing mix, and possible opportunities.
During such times, we recommend and provide qualified interim leadership services for our clients. These services generally involve:
You want to make your organization more effective, and see the need to:
We can create a customized in-depth seminar for product development, marketing, and/or sales (or all functions together). A few examples include:
Defining processes to follow when bad things happen to your technology infrastructure (and making sure they work).
Many organizations are finding themselves evermore dependent on their information technology infrastructure – and increasingly concerned about protecting their operations when that infrastructure fails or is damaged.
Successful business continuity planning requires a leader who can bring together expertise in business, technology, change leadership, and project management.
We’re led business continuity projects for several of our clients, and we are ready and capable to lead yours. We’ve found a five step process to delivering a working plan:
ipso lorem
Ipso lorem
ipso lorem
Ipso lorem