BostonCIO offers consulting for senior-level IT strategy, architecture and implementation management on a defined-scope, project-by-project basis.

Our areas of expertise:

Strategy

Within our information technology strategy development specialty, we develop and implement leading-edge and cost-sensitive information technology (IT) strategies, providing visualization tools to facilitate communications and providing project management and leadership for applications and infrastructure initiatives.

Our due diligence and assessment work often pairs with follow-on projects to develop strategic plans, post-acquisition integration and/or transition plan and information technology and business plan realignments.

With extensive industry experience in all phased software development, customer implementations and development mythologies, we can rapidly access development teams and projects and provide an accurate and detailed independent verification and validation. Our emphasis here is always on whether the process is working and the suitability of the process for the environment, rather than on any kind of “process purity” metrics. Knowing where a project or team is at is only part of the story, BostonCIO delivers the next layer of value through development of time-phased, actionable strategic plans.

Depending on the depth and capabilities of the management team and the internal staff, we can provide a Shared-Basis CIO℠ and Shared-Basis CTO℠ to lead these initiatives. Working with technical staff, executive teams and outside vendors, typically on a 6-to-12-month, fixed monthly fee contract, the BostonCIO Shared-Basis CIO℠ or Shared-Basis CTO℠ fills the role of a classical CIO or CTO.

With the rush to internet-based application and services delivery on shared-vendor managed infrastructure (Cloud applications), we are seeing much broader appeal for the Shared-Basis CIOSM. With many companies moving to various outsourcing models there is less day-to-day staff, equipment and process management to justify a full-time CIO. At the same time, integration, vendor management and strategic alignment issues loom large for these organizations. The perfect fit for an interim or long-term engagement of a BostonCIO Shared-Basis CIOSM.

Architecture

We bring decades of infrastructure and applications architecture experience to every project. Finely aligning the project and business objective to the infrastructure and application design is where enterprises extract great value from technology. As organizations change, grow, acquire and divest, their needs change; typically we find that mismatches between their systems architecture and their new business and transaction models are at the root of most systems issues. As customers and supply chains continually become more sophisticated and integrated, good systems architecture is more and more critical to this growing interoperability to drive out cost and lag time from transactions.

Specific to software development organizations, well-reasoned and implemented development and deployment architecture is critical for developer efficiency, risk mitigation as well as code base maintainability and organization scalability.

Due Diligence

The BostonCIO Due Diligence practice is able to quickly and efficiently access systems, architectures, staff and products. We provide probing tactical and strategic review and risk assessment to develop mitigation recommendations and plans. Delivering diligence projects for acquiring parties, private equity investors, boards of directors and internal executives, we are able to discover the realities often hidden behind techno-smoke and provide the sponsoring party a clear understanding of the true status of overall systems or specific projects.

We differentiate our due diligence projects in three important ways:

• Our teams are always technically credible and deeply experienced in working with internal technologists and vendors to develop the deep relationship required for these projects.
• We only undertake due diligence projects where we understand the business and transactional processes, the technology in play and the overall market sector.
• Graphical System Visualization™ (GSV): Time and time again our clients tell us that the integration of our GSV toolset makes all the difference in the world. It is not uncommon to get feedback from investors and even long-tenured executives noting that the GSV allows them to conceptualize and contextualize their business, technology, and processes in ways they had never before conceived.

With most development organizations today leveraging open source components in their development environment, a focus on an open source software management system has become critical for establishing value and mitigating risk. For many organizations intellectual property risks and opportunities also require attention.

Our due diligence practice is experiencing a relatively new phenomenon, Pre-diligence. Many forward thinking organizations are seeing the value of standing for a BostonCIO due diligence 18-24 or more months before an anticipated transaction. There is typically great value in uncovering issues and beginning remediation long before investors are engaged so that the eventual due diligence is met with identified issues, strategic responses, scoped remediation and, in many cases, mitigation projects well underway.

IMPLEMENTATION

Our implementation services and record of successful implementations sets us apart. Leveraging all of the tools and a dynamic approach to leading project teams, we deliver our projects on time, on budget and typically with a happy team. Our goal is always to deliver the project successfully, while helping each project team member grow, at least a little, as project participants and task managers. We specialize in complex project turnarounds, taking lost opportunity and typically large financial and organizational energy investments and turning them into a successful project that delivers value to the stakeholders.

We have developed a toolset called Big Block Project Management™ for engaging and empowering groups of users to actively commit to and participate in running their own projects. While typically deployed for information technology-centric, time-bound projects, the methodology and tools can be applied across a broad range of simple to complex projects.

BostonCIO consultants are able to efficiently leverage our extensive knowledge and project experience working with the complex and diverse web of data sources, structures, stores and formats that exist within most organizations, to deliver high value, high impact solutions in the Business Intelligence arena. We are able to draw on experience with a wide array of technologies to develop and/or improve existing data warehousing, MDM, ETL, client reporting and analytic solutions to literally transform businesses by getting the right data to the right people in the right timeframe.

Drawing on our depth of knowledge and industry experience, we are able to provide Agile Development Process Coaching and Direction, Offshore Operations Optimization and Software Development Leadership Coaching.