ISTE+ASCD
Partnering with an educational nonprofit to deliver faster and embed agile processes
The brief
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is an American nonprofit that accelerates the use of technology in education. They define standards, provide professional learning and certification, organise conferences, and publish educational resources. In 2023, ISTE merged with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), a global education organisation providing professional learning resources for educators. Now, ISTE+ASCD faced the challenge of integrating their distinct organisational systems and ways of working.
Project summary
In January 2025, ISTE+ASCD were heading into a demanding year, planning to merge their digital presence. This would increase demand on a technology function that was already strained: delayed projects, overflowing maintenance queues, and limited portfolio visibility. ISTE+ASCD approached Loomery for delivery leadership. They needed both capacity and capability - experienced delivery managers to get critical projects over the line, and coaching to help teams work sustainably and perform well.
The challenge
ISTE+ASCD came to us with three interconnected problems:
1. How could we embed consistent, high-quality delivery management processes across the technology portfolio? Rapid growth and merger-driven complexity meant there was an opportunity to strengthen visibility, prioritisation and coordination.
2. How could we improve productivity in maintenance task delivery? The backlog was growing faster than the team could clear it.
3. How do we achieve those and deliver ISTE+ASCD's most important initiative of the year? Consolidating ISTE+ASCD’s membership offering would be large and complex.
Project in numbers
25%
Across 8 key metrics, delivery maturity increased 25% in 3 months.
300%
reduction in work in progress tasks
200%
increase in maintenance task completion speed
“Loomery have set the standard for how all projects should be delivered at ISTE+ASCD going forward”
Brian Simmons, Director, Enterprise Architecture
ISTE+ASCD
Embedding consistent, high-quality delivery management across the portfolio
ISTE+ASCD's senior leaders completed Loomery's delivery capability scorecard before we onboarded, self-assessing against 8 key metrics. This revealed gaps in their delivery maturity. Through discovery, interview and team observations, we identified challenges with planning, prioritisation and dependency management, and capacity planning.
We partnered with ISTE+ASCD's COO and Director of Enterprise Architecture to prioritise high-impact tools and artefacts using Loomery's Delivery Toolbox, a ready-made collection of templates and practices that support these challenges.
We enabled:
• Clearer long-term direction for all teams with a strategic annual roadmap.
• Improved oversight and dependency resolution with weekly delivery assurance forums.
• Enhanced visibility of capacity through weekly allocation planning sessions.
• Reduced wastage by implementing definitions of ready.
• All projects had delivery support with a three-tier support model, weighted on complexity.
In early capacity planning sessions, we discovered the team was spread across as many projects as there were team members. Resources were fragmented, and projects were overspilling. We coached them to consolidate onto fewer, strategically valuable initiatives. Within months, they’d focused primarily on one large project, which delivered on time and to scope.
Three months in, re-assessment showed an almost 25% increase in delivery maturity.
Accelerating productivity
Within six weeks, we saw a 200% improvement in cycle time and a 300% reduction of work in progress.
We identified the next wave of improvements, including introducing clearer prioritisation criteria. We aligned the team on definitions for critical, urgent, important and low priority work, enabling more rapid prioritisation decisions.
Leading delivery of ISTE+ASCD’s most complex strategic initiative
The Joint Membership project was ISTE+ASCD’s flagship initiative of 2025, uniting the two organisations' digital presences, and Loomery oversaw its delivery.
The scope included alignment to a single storefront and fulfilment process, data unification, and membership selection consolidation. It touched most teams across both organisations, relied on multiple third parties and was full of dependencies, and had a hard deadline in 6 months.
We kicked off with a design sprint, guiding stakeholders through rapid discovery, comprehensive journey mapping and risk identification.
We built bespoke ways of working that reflected necessary behaviours, including tight feedback loops through weekly scrum-of-scrums and fortnightly senior stakeholder briefings.
Maintaining control of the scope was critical. We coached ISTE’s senior team to distinguish between MVP and post-launch features and created a singular launch plan adopted by all parties, kept on track with daily launch stand-ups.
Joint Membership launched ahead of schedule with zero issues, setting a benchmark for successful project delivery.
Conclusion
Our partnership with ISTE shows what’s possible by combining agile processes, product thinking, expert coaching and hands-on delivery management. We didn’t just deliver projects; we partnered with ISTE’s technology team to strengthen their working practices, leaving them with sustainable capability they can build on after we’ve gone.
The numbers tell part of the story: drastic improvement in delivery maturity, 200% improvement in productivity and a flagship programme expertly delivered.
The real success is more than numbers; ISTE now has the confidence, tools, and practices to tackle complex challenges independently.
This work demonstrates how organisations can build delivery maturity while executing their most critical initiatives. When you improve how teams work day-to-day, they’re better equipped to deliver the strategic projects that move them forward.
"I had complete visibility into what was happening and when. With support from Loomery, the team kept us informed, managed risks before they became problems, and delivered exactly what we needed on time. It's changed my confidence in what we can achieve together."
Heidi Ellis, Managing Director, Community and Event Engagement, ISTE+ASCD
