TECHNOLOGY & DELIVERY ASSESSMENT · EXECUTIVE BRIEFING
NY Tolling Program — what we found
Quality discipline has been demonstrated — pass rates moved from 50–65% to 90–100% under SWAT. The structural risks now are delivery-management capacity, agency-relationship trust, and an unfunded O&M transition — none of which are technical problems.
- Three-week independent assessment of the technology delivery operating model — engaged under attorney-client privilege through CRTA General Counsel.
- 50+ stakeholder sessions across CRTA leadership, SWAT leads, business analysts, and direct voice-of-customer conversations with three NY tolling agency leaderships.
- Seven assessment dimensions covering quality, testing resources, release flow, environments, O&M transition, the O&M operating model, and the agency relationship.
EXECUTIVE ACTION · WHAT REQUIRES YOUR AUTHORIZATION
Five actions for your team — what to do, by whom
Independent Quality Function
- Charter QA reporting to the CTO with sign-off at requirements and design freeze
- Name the QA Function Owner within two weeks
- Require QA sign-off as a release gate, not a recommendation
Why: Quality enters after development hands off today; the SWAT-led discipline that moved pass rates 50–65% → 90–100% must become the operating model, not stay temporary.
Delivery-Management Layer
- Approve headcount: 1 Tech PM, 3 Product Owners (one per SWAT cluster), 1 Triage Authority Lead
- Move scope-control authority from the individual delivery lead to the triage function
- Recruit-to-fill within 60 days; backfill from offshore where roles permit
Why: One delivery lead currently absorbs every decision — five independent sources named the same bottleneck. The gap is structural, not coachable.
O&M Transition Plan
- Approve the funded plan: L2 staffing to target, runbook completion, EDPAS finish-out
- Name an O&M Lead with end-to-end accountability (not split across functions)
- Authorize an EDPAS completion sprint to unblock the $2–4M in held invoices
Why: CRTA is contractually in O&M with L2 at ~50% capacity, runbooks incomplete, and EDPAS approximately 50% done — neither a funded plan nor named accountability exists.
Agency-Relationship Reset
- CEO-to-counterpart introductions with all three NY tolling agency leaderships within 30 days
- Authorize a joint defect-classification matrix, co-developed and ratified by the agencies
- Establish a monthly executive review cadence — agency by agency
Why: Agency leadership is currently performing CRTA's quality assurance; trust rebuild requires CEO-level engagement, not program-level outreach.
Pipeline-Gated Quality Standard
- Mandate a unit-test coverage gate in the ADO pipeline before any release ships
- Direct the CTO to publish a Release Readiness Standard with quality metrics + escalation criteria
- Make gate compliance a quarterly board reporting metric
Why: Pass rates moved 50–65% → 90–100% under SWAT; removing the SWAT crutch without a gate reproduces the pre-SWAT regression rate.