Jo Smith, Chief Information Officer, College Summit
Fitzgerald Analytics provided invaluable assistance to College Summit during a period of significant growth and change for our organization. Our task was to manage a migration to a new technology platform across all of our partner schools serving over 16000 students nationwide. This was the first project of this type for our organization involving managing vendors, process re-engineering, aligning our curriculum, training our field staff and national support staff as well as developing and delivering training to our educator community nationwide.
In a small, maturing, non-profit environment unfamiliar with, and somewhat intimidated by, standard project management methodologies and techniques, the idea of planning and executing a complex change management initiative that impacted our entire organization and all of our school district partners was daunting.
To complicate matters we also had a very tight timeline for the implementation, less than 6 months. The Managing for Results™ Framework was the perfect solution for us. Defining the goals of the project in terms of desired outcomes for our schools and students and working collaboratively to accomplish this was something everyone within our mission driven environment could relate to. Fitzgerald Analytics helped us to work backward from these goals to produce an implementation roadmap with clear indicators for success. The project was very successful and the new tool was deployed in time for our new school year as planned.
The Fitzgerald Analytics team provided our organization with their expertise and the benefit of an objective perspective while spending enough time reviewing and listening to understand the ‘insiders’ point of view. They understood not only the technology but also our overall organization and goals and they were willing to work within the cultural norms and paradigms that were in existence. At the same time they pushed the boundaries and worked with us to transition our culture to a new level of maturity around project management. Their work provided us with a foundation upon which to build by developing our internal capacity and deepening our understanding and appreciation for project management techniques.
Through their involvement in our project, the Fitzgerald Analytics team gained significant knowledge and insight about our organization. They became valuable thought partners on strategy, process and organizational design and we have since engaged them on several projects. Our work with them has been essential to the development of our organization and their contribution continues to create positive change.
