Flight Levels Day

Ariel was engaged by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in response to a critical operational crisis within the agency’s IT organization. A rapidly growing backlog of application enhancement and remediation requests driven by new business processes, regulatory requirements, and policy mandates had reached an unsustainable level across NYCHA’s major divisions, with even minor improvements taking more than nine months to deliver. To stabilize operations and restore delivery capacity, Ariel partnered with NYCHA to design and implement a Target Operating Model encompassing IT strategy, workforce, processes, and technology. The resulting improvements were specifically focused on enabling IT teams to rapidly address urgent system fixes and high-priority business needs across NYCHA’s enterprise application portfolio, while establishing a foundation for sustained operational resilience.

NYCHA is the largest public housing authority in North America, responsible for providing affordable housing to more than 550,000 residents across the five boroughs. NYCHA manages a vast and complex portfolio that includes over 2,500 buildings and 200,000 apartments, making it one of the city’s most critical providers of housing and community stability. NYCHA oversees an annual budget of roughly $6B, a significant sum, yet less than half of the estimated $40B required to bring all buildings up to code. The chronic funding shortfall necessitates a state of permanent triage, where tasks and requests are strictly prioritized, and improvements to convenience and comfort are often deferred to ensure safety and basic livability. Ariel conducted a comprehensive assessment of the IT organization and led targeted workshops and executive interviews with leaders from the four primary operating divisions responsible for approximately 80 percent of the agency’s IT demand. Through this effort, we identified key root causes and delivered actionable recommendations spanning staffing, organizational structure, governance, service delivery processes, and the strategic use of automation to eliminate bottlenecks created by labor-intensive manual workflows.

We began by designing a Flight Levels system architecture that modeled NYCHA’s end-to-end value streams, encompassing both development and operations teams to create transparency across the system of work. Recognizing NYCHA’s significant investment in ServiceNow and their desire to retain the platform, we focused on enabling better use of the existing tool rather than recommending replacement. We analyzed ServiceNow’s native capabilities and implemented agile boards aligned to all three Flight Levels, while simplifying configurations to “de-customize” the environment and return to out-of-the-box functionality wherever possible. By identifying the optimal approach for mapping value streams within ServiceNow, we enabled clearer portfolio flow and prioritization. We also supported the formation of cross-functional teams, established structured standups at each Flight Level, and helped redesign organizational structures to remove bureaucratic layers that had been hindering collaboration and decision-making.

The resulting improvement roadmap balanced immediate corrective actions with medium-term reforms and longer-term transformation initiatives. Within six months of implementation, the IT organization achieved a 58 percent increase in service delivery throughput, a 75 percent reduction in the demand backlog, and a measurable improvement in staff engagement and satisfaction.