Cognitive Technologies Completes Technology Optimization Project with Federal Agency
Austin, TX, April 4, 2011. Cognitive Technologies – a consulting firm specializing in project management, collaborative processes, and organizational effectiveness for the federal government and Fortune 1000 companies – has completed a project with a large civilian federal agency to inventory its technology and optimize IT tool usage among its employees and line-of-business support.
As a part of the project, the Cognitive Technologies team:
- Conducted a technology inventory against critical job roles to capture work processes supported by individual technologies, usability, and reliability, the appropriateness of the technology to information needs, costs, and requests for additional functionality.
- Analyzed key performers in selected job roles by conducting a human performance analysis, using the Performance DNA methodology that was co-developed by Dr. Karen McGraw, CEO of Cognitive Technologies. This analysis methodology enables the Cognitive Technologies team to study how current technologies and tools within the agency were being used.
- Conducted an online survey to capture additional data on tools usage and needs across all support job roles and tools.
Working from this data, Cognitive Technologies developed a Tools Optimization Strategy that slotted 49 tools into various categories (Maintain, Retire, Enhance, and Investigate for Virtualization) based on their criticality to job performance, with a potential immediate savings of approximately $500K. The Cognitive Technologies team also recommended three strategic projects that represented quick wins and additional ways to optimize the tools infrastructure and support end users agency-wide.
"Organizations purchase attractive, powerful tools every day. The end result is often group of tools, some of which are rarely used, others with duplicative functions, and still others for which effective training has never been provided," explains Dr. McGraw. “Tool optimization projects are so critical because they expose what people are really using to do their jobs as well as how to improve the toolset’s effectiveness. Performance DNA helped this agency view tools from the perspective of the user community and their work, revealing opportunity to make changes that improve productivity and tool value.”
About Cognitive Technologies
Cognitive Technologies, Inc. (www.cognitive-technologies.com) is a certified WBE/DBE consulting firm specializing in project management, collaborative portals, and organizational effectiveness. Cognitive delivers appropriate solutions to improve the performance of business units through the application of expertise in projects, people and technology. We are a certified Microsoft Partner, an SBA 8(m) Small Woman Owned Business, and a Texas HUB. Visit our blog at www.fearnoproject.com and connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.