Large-scale, complex transformation projects can be daunting for any enterprise, doubly so for government agencies. At Karsun, we recognize the mission comes first. We consider the technical requirements of our current modernization efforts and the goals and objectives of our agency customers. That includes envisioning every modernization effort as a product, acknowledging the product’s purpose now and its intended use in the future. We call this Modernization for Every Next. 

Modernization for Every Next includes enhancing our customers’ capabilities throughout our engagement. Our toolkits play a crucial role in that process. These toolkits provide valuable insights into the modernization process, scale to support new objectives, and prepare the way for future initiatives. They ensure our subject matter experts can access the resources they need to introduce best practices and accelerate transformation. Managed and maintained by the Karsun Innovation Center, dedicated practice advocates within the Center ensure toolkits incorporate emerging trends and technologies, utilize proven approaches, and follow industry best practices.

GoLean for Greater Insights

Some Karsun toolkits build comprehensive insights around the development and transformation process itself. As part of a broader change management process, this enables Karsun and its customers to focus on the best practices and approaches for them. It provides a benchmark for future process improvements.

Imagine if you had a dashboard that could tell you if a particular type of testing was more effective, demonstrate the return on investment for implementing a new DevSecOps practice, or simply reveal your team was completing its work faster than ever before. This is the purpose of Karsun’s GoLean platform. This agile platform combines diagnostic and prescriptive metrics with automations proven to accelerate development, testing, and DevSecOps practices. 

We are so confident in this approach that we use this toolkit in-house to identify opportunities to improve our practice. As a result, our software development process was appraised at CMMI v2.0 Level 5 (DEV). At this assessment tier, organizations use data-driven insights to drive their process improvement strategy. Less than a hundred government systems integrators nationwide received appraisal at this level.

Accelerate Migration with Cloud Runways

Another one of our toolkits, Cloud Runways, combines in-depth assessment with repeatable playbooks to accelerate certain migration projects. We begin with an assessment. This includes identifying target applications, determining dependencies, and analyzing available technology. This also includes future state analysis, ensuring the proposed solution can scale with you. Next, we build a “runway” for the project. Each runway uses proven playbooks, tasks, and resources.

We have migrated 40+ applications using these runways. These migrations span use cases from low-code/no-code refactoring to container rehosting. As part of our Modernization for Every Next mindset, we offer runways that help you optimize and build new capabilities as you migrate. For instance, our CI/CD for Windows Apps Runway adds DevOps automations when we migrate Windows apps into AWS ECS or Redhat OpenShift. 

While we offer vendor-agnostic solutions, we are also backed by three AWS competencies. To earn these competencies, Karsun proved the expertise of our migration teams through certifications. We also consistently delivered cloud solutions using AWS best practices for government, migration, and DevOps. 

Design for Every Next

Karsun’s Digital Transformation toolkits are among the most recent additions to our toolkit library. Included in this set of toolkits are our UI/UX toolkits. This pairs our human centered design process with a component library to quickly identify and develop user interfaces as part of transformation efforts.

Building on the lived experiences of application users, we apply a domain driven design approach to UI/UX. That includes engaging technical and domain experts in collaboration from the start. We also build in feedback loops throughout application development. This way, domain driven design allows us to model and identify specific aspects of complex systems. For instance, using domain driven design with one grants management customer, we identified opportunities to build eligibility evaluation, fund distribution and reporting as sub-parts of the grants platform. In the next domain driven design step, we take the model one step further. Each of the platform subparts is comprised of the modular building blocks. These include the user interfaces. 

We can then apply resources from our extensive component library to each of these UI building blocks. The resources in this library utilize proven REACT, Angular and other frameworks to quickly create new interfaces. Additionally, a modularized approach lets our teams extend or enhance capabilities as we receive feedback from users as part of the human centered design process. Throughout the design process we are Modernizing for Every Next.

We found using our toolkits dramatically accelerates the digital transformation process. Our experienced technical teams start engagements with proven tools, playbooks and resources. Our data driven processes further empower these teams to receive feedback, adapt and elevate capabilities as they build. Dive into our Innovation Center toolkits to discover how this process gives your agency the power to Modernize for Every Next. 

Digital transformation accelerates government agencies’ ability to meet their mission and elevate their capabilities. Now more than ever, these agencies are racing to build secure systems that improve the citizen experience while preparing for future needs and users. To help agencies meet and continually address these challenges, Karsun delivers Modernization for Every Next. 

As Karsun empowers these agencies for their Every Next, we enable our technology experts and problem solvers to Find Your Next. As part of our ongoing series, we are sharing how builders, experimenters, and innovators use technology to solve intricate modernization challenges at Karsun. When they join our team, they grow their careers while using their problem-solving skills to support government agencies in the acquisitions, aviation, grants management, and fleet management industries.

Our last post shared how our Karsun Innovation Center empowers teams to Find Your Next through experimentation. Part of that process was leveraging our toolkits based on mature technology solutions. Another component of those toolkits is their robust support for nurturing collaboration as part of the problem-solving process. Notably, this collaboration is centered on the customer and user experience, ensuring the mission comes first in every solution we execute. 

A Collaborative Culture Adapts to Mission Needs

Nowhere is this commitment more evident than when we implement our Digital Transformation Toolkits. Using domain driven design, we focus on the mission of our customer and their users. Our assessment starts by engaging experts in the customer’s domain (e.g., users of grants management platforms) with our technical experts in an approach called event storming. We use the feedback from these collaborative sessions to build scalable, flexible applications using ready-made microservices resources developed by our Karsun Innovation Center. (We dive deeper into this approach in our recent Design for Every Next white paper.)

For one of our grants management customers, our collaboration-centered toolkits allowed us to build a platform that modernized existing legacy grants programs while adding new grants programs to meet that customer’s emerging needs. Our teams could do this because our process prioritizes collaboration and gives our builders and problem solvers the tools to adapt to new customer requests. 

Empowering Self Guiding Teams

In the previous post, we also mentioned our GoLean Agile Platform, which provides data driven insights into the development process. The tools on this platform also support another core principle at Karsun, enabling self guiding teams. We ensure our teams have the autonomy to problem solve and build solutions in the best way for them. 

One component of that process is giving those teams the tools to assess their productivity. Our GoLean toolkit provides over 25 health and diagnostic visualizations to help teams better understand their work. These visualizations include measurements like lead time, release frequency, and failure rate. Our toolkit also provides these teams with eight statistical models to help them better predict outcomes.

In addition to these technology resources, we support self guiding through our commitment to workplace flexibility. Most roles at Karsun allow teams to determine whether they wish to remain fully remote or hybrid. Our headquarters in Herndon, Virginia, has collaborative workspaces for those that want to gather in person. However, all resources, from training to toolkits, are available virtually, and most of our teams are fully remote. 

At Karsun, we support our collaborative community with the resources and flexibility to solve problems effectively. Our teams are mission focused and passionate about technology’s ability to deliver better government to the citizen. If you, too, are passionate about building better technology for the government, then Team Karsun is where you will Find Your Next. Learn more about our open roles at KarsunCareers.com/jobs.

This blog is our third in our four part series. Follow along and discover why Karsun is Where Problem Solvers Find Their Next and Where Experts Experiment for Mission Success.

Karsun Solutions is an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner. After more than a decade of delivering complex cloud solutions, we are experts in optimizing outcomes for our government agency customers. Not only do we deliver superior solutions, but our Karsun Innovation Center (KIC) in-house research and development team constantly experiments, prototypes and validates technology to ensure the implementation of best practices.

We previously shared one way our KIC brings the latest technologies to our teams, leveraging our AWS partnership to enhance Karsun’s proprietary GoLean platform. In the last five years, Karsun continued to expand our toolkit offerings. Through our technology partners, like AWS, our toolkits allow our teams to jumpstart new projects with readymade resources based on best practices.

GoLean Grows Up

As DevOps matured, so too did our approach. The GoLean platform grew and matured alongside it. 

“DevSecOps is a natural evolution of DevOps,” explains Badri Sriraman, Senior Vice President of the Karsun Innovation Center. “In the same way continuous deployment ensures improved functionally for the user, DevSecOps ensures a hardened security infrastructure is implemented for the successful operation of software in production.”

Our GoLean platform not only includes a robust lean measurement toolkit but also incorporates metrics and automates processes to accelerate the adoption of DevSecOps best practices. Our continuous delivery framework enables DevSecOps teams to decouple a feature deployment from its release so that Developers can self-manage the feature, test it in production and incrementally roll it out to users after validation of its operational performance in a shadow data network. Utilizing a low-code open source data pipeline tool enables fine-tuned data synchronization between legacy and modernized components. Additionally, our Duke Test Automation Framework supports continuous testing at scale.

Karsun Adds Cloud Runways

In addition to GoLean, Cloud Runways built on AWS or other cloud services now provide enhancements to our DevSecOps solutions. The toolkits allow teams to not only migrate legacy applications to the cloud but fully optimize them for DevSecOps. The Replatform Runway introduces DevSecOps automation using Terraform, Ansible, and Packer for Windows containers while migrating Windows apps into AWS ECS or Redhat OpenShift.

In addition to the Replatform Runways, we created nine robust runway toolkits based on best practices. This includes extensive experience delivering on AWS. We achieved both an AWS Government Competency and an AWS Migration Competency, validating our ongoing commitment to delivery excellence. A public sector partner, we are committed to helping agencies modernize to meet their mission.

As modernization requirements evolve, so too has our modernization suite. Karsun’s GoLean platform continuously adapts to the latest security and development approaches. Simultaneously we strengthened and enhanced our migration offering via Cloud Runways to optimize for DevSecOps adoption. Ongoing research and development into automation, CI/CD and DevSecOps are one of many ways Karsun ensures our architecture is built to last.

Herndon, VA, USA (12 April 2022)— Karsun Solutions announced today that it was once again appraised at CMMI Level 5 for Development. Karsun is one of the first 25 companies in the U.S. to receive this distinction under the updated V2.0 (CMMI-DEV) appraisal model. to hold this distinction for quality and procedures in development.  The appraisal was performed by Maverick Quality Advisory Services (MQAS).

CMMI is a proven, outcome-based performance model and the globally accepted standard for improving capability, optimizing business performance and aligning operations to business goals.

An appraisal at Maturity Level 5 indicates that the organization is performing at an “optimizing” level. At this level, an organization continually improves its processes based on a quantitative understanding of its business objectives and performance needs. The organization uses a quantitative approach to understand the variation inherent in the process and the causes of process outcomes.

GoLean® forms the foundation of the quantitative methodology used by the Karsun Solutions modern software development practice. It combines data-driven insights with modern software development and DevSecOps principles in a proprietary platform. Developed by its in-house Innovation Center, the platform is designed for software development, delivery and orchestration. The CI/CD pipelines can be configured and integrated with existing tools and on multiple cloud platforms. It also allows for each implementation to be optimized based on customer needs and constraints.

“This is a proud moment for Karsun to be one of the select companies rated at Level 5 in the federal marketplace,” said Badri Sriraman, Senior Vice President, Karsun Innovation Center. “We are proud of our teams as they raise the bar for delivery excellence once again.”

“Organizations worldwide are harnessing CMMI to elevate their business performance to new heights, creating a sustainable competitive advantage in the process,” says Ron Lear, Senior Director, CMMI Program. “We commend Karsun Solutions on achieving this CMMI appraisal level and demonstrating their ability as a high-performing organization.”

For more information about CMMI performance solutions, visit www.isaca.org/enterprise/cmmi-performance-solutions.

About Karsun Solutions

Karsun Solutions is a fast-growing, innovative enterprise modernization firm. Recently awarded Best Company Culture by Comparably.com, its teams deliver modern software development, cloud, and data solutions to customers at government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration and General Services Administration. Leveraging GoLean, Karsun teams drive digital transformation and help its government customers Do Extraordinary. Learn more at Karsun-LLC.com.

Media Contact: marketing@karsun-llc.com