Rory McCorkle, PhD, VP of Business Development
July 30, 2024
While hard to believe for me, this week marks six months since I joined Strasz Assessment Systems. As I marked that milestone, I drifted toward the incredible work this organization has done over the past couple of decades and the great strides we are making this year. We often share with prospective clients how working with Strasz provides them with boutique service and attention with a larger organization’s reach, which is best reflected in our dedication to research & development. In the testing and assessment industry, having a diverse group of suppliers helps drive innovation in our service to candidates, and Strasz epitomizes this in several areas.
AI
How could I start with any other topic but the most du jour, demanded topic within testing this year: AI? Through conferences this year, we have seen a number of organizations roll out innovations in the space and I have no doubt they will keep coming!
AI is a primary area of innovation for Strasz in 2024. While much of the conversation around AI in the industry has focused on Automated Item Generation (AIG), several applications for AI are more tailored to leveraging its power in the testing space. From operational uses, such as using chatbots to provide 24/7 service, streamlining and automating aspects of eligibility processing in certification, and marking/scoring text responses to questions, to more transformational uses, such as personalized credentials, we have seen a breadth of applications that would have been almost fanciful a few years ago.
At Strasz, we recognize that many of our customers operate critical assessment programs for their industries with limited budgets and staff. Accordingly, one of our focus areas has been using AI to help reduce the time spent on common psychometric tasks. We were proud to announce the roll-out of our automated tool for identifying enemy items to improve the accuracy of this task and reduce time spent by testing organization’s staff and volunteers. Similarly, we are alpha testing our tool to automate test assembly, allowing organizations to create new test forms automatically based on test blueprint and psychometric parameters while incorporating our enemy analysis to eliminate potential enemies on a single form. These innovations will help our clients spend less time on these tasks and refocus on more value-generating activities.
With these accomplishments completed or rolling out, we are excited about the next wave of AI innovations we are working on, so stay tuned here for more news!
Client Responsivity
When I joined Strasz, one of my job search goals was to find a company where being responsive to client needs was paramount. This year alone, we have released enhancements to Pro!, our item banking software, to address client feedback regarding user experience, volunteer and project management, publication process, and item development process management, just to name a few! Being part of an organization that highly values client feedback is exciting and certainly brings pride to everyone at Strasz.
Product Enhancements
Another marker of great leadership in product management and technology is flexibility in embracing opportunities. Strasz proudly rolled out SetScore! in 2023, our software to support the standard setting process. Recently, we identified an opportunity to extend this platform to support alternative models of setting a cut for alternative item types. Our team not only rose to the challenge but embraced it! We adapted the software to meet the needs for Likert ratings on these alternative items while preserving the platform’s collaboration, data analysis, workflow management, and reporting capabilities.
Summary
Reflecting on the first half of 2024, I am excited about the potential these continued evolutions have for our clients and the candidates we serve. To our clients – thank you for your engagement and feedback! For those interested in learning more about these new capabilities or our products, please contact us to learn more or to schedule a demo!
About the Author
Rory McCorkle is the Vice President of Business Development for Strasz Assessment Systems. With 23 years of experience in the testing industry, he is a recognized expert in testing and assessment. Having worked with hundreds of licensure bodies, credentialing organizations, and higher education institutions on their testing programs, he has helped them navigate strategy, product development and management, test development, marketing, and accreditation issues in their programs. When not at work, he spends his time playing sports in local Kansas City community leagues, playing music and singing, as well as spending time with his wife and three stepchildren.
John DeFalco, SR Software Engineer
August 6th, 2021
Ken White is a Scrum Master for one of our Agile development teams. He’s also our Production Support Operations Manager for the same customer. I don’t believe combining these roles is a practice unique to Strasz. What really sets Ken apart from most others is, he is also currently the Fire Chief for the Liberty Corner Volunteer Fire Department1. So, it goes without saying that Ken has both an educational background and practical experience to bring teams of people together with a high likelihood of success. We’ve all heard of the chicken and egg paradox. So was the fire department the chicken and his college degree the egg? Or vice versa?
Ken (left) alongside the Chief (middle) and Deputy Chief (right) of the Liberty Corner Volunteer Fire Department.
Ken White is a Scrum Master for one of our Agile development teams. He’s also our Production Support Operations Manager for the same customer. I don’t believe combining these roles is a practice unique to Strasz. I’m sure there are plenty of other leaders in the field that are holding down both positions. What might be rarer, Ken has a degree in Management Information System & Operations Management that almost exactly aligns with his current job responsibilities. What really sets Ken apart from most others is, he is also currently the Fire Chief for the Liberty Corner Volunteer Fire Department1. So, it goes without saying that Ken has both an educational background and practical experience to bring teams of people together with a high likelihood of success. We’ve all heard of the chicken and egg paradox. So was the fire department the chicken and his college degree the egg? Or vice versa?
James Lipton from The Actor’s Studio is often fond of saying, “Let’s start at the beginning.” Back in the summer of 1986, Ken was working as a lifeguard and snack bar manager at a local pool when a friend approached him about joining the volunteer fire department. He hadn’t previously given it a thought. Yet, he immediately became fascinated by the inner workings of how the organization came together as a team. He was impressed that such a large group of volunteers could be coordinated to achieve great things in the community. The do-it-yourselfer in Ken was also fascinated with the department’s dizzying array of tools and equipment.
Later that same year, he went off to college at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Ken conveys his choice of UNCG simply as “My parents could afford the school, and it was farther away than Rutgers.” As was previously stated, he pursued a degree in Management Information Systems & Operations Management, which was a natural choice, in retrospect. From early adulthood, Ken had a predisposition towards organizational thinking, technology, leadership, and management.
After graduating from college, Ken began his career at AT&T as a software developer and simultaneously became more involved with the fire department. He started his coding journey with an internal COBOL development program at AT&T. Ken rose through the organization over the next ten years. Ken eventually became a District Manager, with a staff of 80+ and 3 direct report managers. Concurrently, he rose through the ranks of the fire department. He became President, then worked his way up as Assistant, 2nd Assistant, then eventually Chief. At the fire department, Ken leads a multi-faceted team of 60 volunteers.
The overlap of these two paths is significant. Both have a business and support side that require intense management, efficient organization, and experienced leadership at a high level. A software company’s business revolves around planning and scheduling releases, conducting regular status meetings, managing budgets, and interfacing with customers. The fire department is organized as a not-for-profit business and, as such, has a President that presides over the company’s business. This includes filing tax for
ms with the state, managing donations, fiscal planning, project planning, creating specifications, procurement, politics, and leading public meetings. Both positions require an individual at the top with stellar organizational and planning skills and a positive demeanor supporting customers.
For a software company, every product requires support. Users will encounter defects, and those defects must quickly be researched, verified, and remediated. Customers will occasionally have ad-hoc, high-priority requests in response to their own business’ stimuli, colloquially referred to as “fires” by the production support team. In parallel, the support side of the firehouse handles responding to dispatched 911 calls and extinguishing actual, physical fire alerts sent through an Incident Command System. When asked which fires are harder to control, Ken quipped, “The actual fires … usually”.
On both fronts, teams are composed of individuals with specific roles and skills. For a software company, those roles are typically developers, designers, quality assurance, and IT. Team members use their varied skills and come together to create solutions. When a challenge arises, Developers will research the code base and provide technical solutions. Production support accesses the logs in production and applies their working knowledge of the system and the user’s workflow to determine how to recreate the issue. IT investigates network, security, and server-related issues. The fire department is similarly multi-faceted. The engine company performs fire suppression, the truck company provides ventilation and search capabilities, and others whose job is to provide a water supply. Clearly, both organizations need a respected and capable leader to coordinate the varied problem resolution activities in a responsive and professional manner.
In the summer of 2021, Ken celebrated his 35th year with the Liberty Corner Fire Department. I’d like to extend the celebration by adding to it Ken’s 35th year of applying, like Liam Neeson (Taken), “a particular set of skills,” both technical and managerial, to every aspect of his professional and personal life.
1 http://www.libertycornerfire.org/ – please help their cause by donating!