More responsive cybersecurity assessment delivery

The challenge

Customer priorities changed frequently, with assessments sometimes needed within four to six weeks. Yet the existing intake process alone could take six weeks. Sequential handoffs, meetings, and rigid staffing assignments within a long-term integrated master schedule limited the teams’ ability to respond.

My responsibility

I owned the overall intake process and led the group responsible for assessment delivery. The assessment teams performed the work; my responsibility was to improve how incoming demand, priorities, and resources came together.

What changed

I reorganized the workload around Agile teams and empowered team leads to organize their resources and adjust scheduling as customer priorities shifted.

We streamlined handoffs and meetings, introduced standardized assessment-start templates, and improved visibility into each incoming assessment’s complexity, deadline, and readiness.

Teams coordinated through a shared backlog and regular stand-ups. I led a weekly “scrum of scrums” with team leads to review workloads and align capacity with demand. Assessment reviews remained in place, supported by improved readiness criteria.

The results

Intake time fell from approximately six weeks to one week. Annual delivery increased from approximately 65 to 85 assessments—about 31%—with the same number of staff. Teams could respond more readily to changing customer priorities, with greater flexibility across the overall delivery schedule.

Leadership perspective

Put the customer’s mission first. Challenge processes that add delay without value. Give team leads the authority and information to organize delivery, while maintaining clear expectations for readiness and quality.