Client Success Stories

  • Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT)

  • 757 Collab

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is the 3rd-largest transportation department in US, spending over a half a billion dollars annually on IT to ensure the safety and comfort of Virginia drivers.

VDOT faced huge issues with specific projects running over budget, over schedule, and negatively impacting other efforts. IT leadership needed a better way to predict & manage these “problem children” projects before they went dramatically over-budget and required significant additional resources to complete.

Virginia Department of Transportation

Downtown Richmond depends on VDOT

Working closely with senior IT leadership, we analyzed a key IT project portfolio comprised of 55 projects costing $147M covering a broad range of functional areas.

Using our proprietary Portfolio Volatility Analysis (PVA) models, we determined volatility both at the organizational and individual project levels, then calculated where risk premiums were highest.

How well does PVA work? When RavenLogic presented our results to VDOT’s IT leadership, they were shocked to discover that they had $63M in previously unidentified volatility-driven budget risk. That’s the equivalent of a bank missing its reserves by 43%. Yeah, yikes.

To focus resources to where they were most needed, we used Volatility Quadrant analysis to determine a “Watch List” for Quadrants II, III, and IV (12 projects out of 55) that required specific attention and captured 90% of overall exposure.

Moreover, the projects that PVA predicted to be the most volatile matched 100% of “problem child” projects, as well as several others that were just beginning to show issues.

What They Loved

We provided IT Leadership with transparent, defensible insights that they used to immediately improve project performance and adjust project designs to better manage volatility going forward.

VDOT was impressed how PVA generated powerful new insights that previous approaches were unable to even consider or provide specific recommendations.

757 Collab

757 Collab fuels daring startups by connecting founders with incubation, acceleration, and capital infusion from vision to venture in eight metro areas in eastern Virginia’s Tidewater region.

Their executives needed to revolutionize strategic planning across five LOBs and 2,500 founders generating $107M in annual community impact.

757 Startup Studios

757 Accelerate

757 Defend

757 Angels

757 Partnerships

Internal Momentum Review (IMR) identified numerous opportunities for improvement across all five topic areas (Strategy, Culture, People, Process, and Tools).

757 Collab leadership and teams now use IMR to strengthen stakeholder engagement, process efficiency, and strategic focus across Lines of Business (LOBs).

Innovation Topography Model (ITM) clearly showed where the 757 Collab portfolio’s founders were distributed across the full range of the innovation map – and why.

757 Collab leadership and teams now use ITM to identify new opportunities, clarify value propositions, and coach founders on how to be more valuable to angel investors.

What They Loved

757 Collab Leadership and their Board of Directors were so impressed with the results that they made the Clarissimo 4M Model the common foundation for 2025-2027 strategic planning and stakeholder interaction models going forward.