CSC Catalyst: The Basics and the Benefits

When Sam Gross needed to create a new IT delivery plan for a client, he had two options: start from scratch building his own, or build one based on CSC’s field-tested best practices. Using CSC Catalyst, he chose the latter course and saved himself – and his client – a lot of time.

“It’s tough when you’re dealing with a new contract and trying to absorb the scope of deliverables you owe the client,” recalled Gross, formerly chief technology officer for CSC’s Nortel account and now CTO, Army IT transformation in CSC’s Defense Group. “I was able to look at all the deliverables that I had and with Catalyst I was able to find assets that I needed to deliver to the client. I saved six months of work because I didn’t have to develop it all myself.”

A staple of CSC for over 10 years, Catalyst is the company’s methodology for delivering services and solutions to clients. It guides the way employees think about work, plan the work, and do the work so that CSC can offer clients consistent, repeatable and high-quality service. Catalyst gives users a set of best practice processes, templates, and guidelines that provide direction and establish a starting “blueprint,” while still encouraging innovation.

“Catalyst is not overly prescriptive,” said David Jones, methodology architect for the Catalyst Group in the Corporate Knowledge Program. “We don’t expect a user to take something from Catalyst and say, ‘This is exactly how we have to use it.’ It’s meant to be tailored to specific business and technology environments.”

Catalyst can be tailored because it employs a flexible framework. Regardless of the engagement’s size or scope, practitioners frame client needs or problems in terms of expected change: the areas in which change will likely occur and the phases of the engagement lifecycle when that change must be addressed. In Catalyst terminology, the “Six Domains of Change” (where) and the “Box of Boxes” (when and how) provide the foundation.

Change: Where and When?

With the Six Domains of Change (see figure A), Catalyst enables users to examine the client’s business environment from six different angles and determine the degree of change that will occur in each of the following:

• Business process – how work is performed to achieve business goals
• Organization – roles, people and culture
• Location – where the people, processes and technology reside
• Data – what information the processes, applications and organization will need
• Applications – software and tools to support the business
• Technology – hardware, system software and communications infrastructure.

Once users understand the context and degree of change in those six domains of the client’s business, they select which phase of the engagement they are in (from vision and strategy to development to operations) and which management processes they require (from architectural engineering to program management). Catalyst represents each of these stages in the “Box of Boxes” (see figure B). Each box has associated with it a variety of assets, such as templates, tools and sample work products, which apply specifically to that phase.

“Based on the client’s needs and how much change is going to occur in each of the six domains, you go into one or more phases in Catalyst and select the assets you need to solve the problem, and put them together into a work plan,” said Dave Nyman, a practice manager in CSC Consulting Group’s Large Program Management practice. This plan then becomes the basis for service delivery for the entire life of the engagement.

“The domains assist in defining many aspects of the project, such as the scope, risks, and solution,” added Helen Jones-Kelleher, who uses Catalyst extensively in her role as UK intranet redevelopment manager. “So you’re constantly looking at the six domains all the way through the lifecycle of the project. It’s a very holistic approach.”

The Catalyst documentation is available to practitioners in both printed and electronic formats (via the Catalyst Toolkit). In addition to descriptions of processes, activities, work products, concepts, and techniques, the Toolkit provides a wealth of templates, examples, and tools.

Working with subject matter experts, the Catalyst engineering team creates assets that incorporate field-tested best practices and lessons learned from previous client engagements. Catalyst is currently in Release 4; much like software, Catalyst evolves over time as assets are added and updated to meet changing business and market needs.

“Every time I turn to Catalyst, I find something that gives me a significant boost,” said Gross. “I can find samples of IT strategies, IT delivery plans – all types of work products I would need.”

Related Information:

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Read more about CSC Catalyst.

Learn about CSC’s knowledge management solutions.

License Catalyst.

Read part two of the Catalyst series.