Case Studies

Choose a case study link below:

Local School District - IT Assessment

State Government Agency - IT Assessment

Fiber Networking Company - Vendor Selection

Telecommunications Company - Architecture Review

Telecommunications Company - Architecture Training

Problem - A suburban school district near Columbus, Ohio was having difficulty with the utility and stability of their desktop computers. There were outdated technologies that were costly to maintain and inflexible for deploying the latest educational software. A great deal of effort was being expended on basic support and repair of the desktop machines. A tentative plan for a move to open source software was being considered.

Analysis - Haskell Technologies interviewed a cross section of administrators, teachers, and students to clearly define the primary needs of each group as well as the most common difficulties. The existing server and desktop environments were examined as well as documents on the plan to move to open source software. The review found that the school district had evolved their computing needs over many years and needed to take a much bolder step forward to provide a foundation for the future.

Recommendation - A new position of Technology Director was created and an experienced educational technologist hired from a university environment. Further recommendations were made to first stabilize the computing systems and to produce a stepwise formal plan for a migration to open source software.

Problem - A suburban school district near Columbus, Ohio was having difficulty with the utility and stability of their desktop computers. There were outdated technologies that were costly to maintain and inflexible for deploying the latest educational software. A great deal of effort was being expended on basic support and repair of the desktop machines. A tentative plan for a move to open source software was being considered.

Analysis - Haskell Technologies interviewed a cross section of administrators, teachers, and students to clearly define the primary needs of each group as well as the most common difficulties. The existing server and desktop environments were examined as well as documents on the plan to move to open source software. The conclusion we saw was that the school district had evolved their computing needs over many years and needed to take a much bolder step forward to provide a foundation for the future.

Recommendation - A new position of Technology Director was created and an experienced educational technologist hired from a university environment. Further recommendations were made to first stabilize the computing systems and to produce a stepwise formal plan for a migration to open source software.

Problem - A small agency of the state of Ohio was in the process of shifting their focus which required more external access for their employees. They utilized a core database application to manage all of their workflow. In additon, they used an outdated platform for their email which had limited external access. The setup for backing up critical data required multiple manual operations.

Analysis - Haskell Technologies first inventoried the server and desktop environment. The current support staff as well as a large cross section of employees were interviewed to understand the diversity of user computing needs. We found that a widely variable set of technologies had been deployed incrementally over many years resulting in a complex environment that was difficult to maintain and upgrade.

Recommendation - Recommendations were made to replace a collection of multiple servers of various technologies with a common technical base on a core set of servers. For external access to be more consistent, all major applications in the future will be accessible from a web browser. In this way, no custom outboard access methods will be required.

Problem - A midwestern fiber optic networking company started business with inventory handled on spreadsheets and manual circuit design and provisioning methods. As the business grew, this became unmanageable with the volume of circuits being sold.

Analysis - A member of our staff looked at the volume of business and worked with the customer to define requirements for both inventory, circuit design, and provisioning. He also determined the price point that the business could support. A formal Request for Proposal was written. Several vendors were chosen for consideration based on product brochures and recommendations. The RFP was executed, and vendors were brought in for formal written and oral presentations of features and price contracts.

Recommendation - A recommendation was made to chose a vendor who could provide a solid tradeoff of feature richness at an acceptable price point and who had a product family that could be further engaged as the business needs and requirements grew in the future.

Problem - A large US telecommunications company was having significant problems with development organizations deploying technically flawed projects. This was causing project cost overruns, service delays, and customer dissatisfaction.

Analysis - A root cause analysis was explored for several projects that had difficulties. Several projects were reviewed to discover the design issues and reasons for project problems.

Recommendation - An architecture review process was created that became a mandatory quality gate for all projects throughout the company. The CTO created an Architecture Review Board to oversee the reviews and discover trends and key learnings. Over a 10 year period, over 500 reviews led by experienced architects were held resulting in significant quality improvements and a savings of millions of dollars.

Problem - Despite the institution of an Architecture Review process at a large US telecommunications company, the same mistakes were being seen repetitively by these reviews. There appeared to be no rigorous process employed in most organizations to define an adequate systems architecture across the many dimensions of issues that needed attention.

Analysis - One of the root causes of architecture wide failure was discovered to be inadequate training of the staff such that validated designs could be in place early in the project lifecycle. In many instances, no true architect position was staffed.

Recommendation - A Systems Architecture Course was produced and offered to all development organizations throughout the company. This course drew heavily on the experience and outcomes from the Architecture Reviews and was taught as a hands on workshop for practitioners. After several years of refinement, this course became mandatory training for all senior software engineers throughout the company.