From Zero to KPIs in Six Months: Standing Up a Performance Management Program for a New Federal Technical Assistance Center.

About the Client

CTAA is a national nonprofit association that has worked in public and community transportation for more than three decades, operating on the premise that mobility is a basic human right. N-CATT is one of CTAA’s federally funded programs: a technical assistance center funded through a cooperative agreement with the FTA, with a mission to give small-urban, rural, and tribal transit agencies practical, replicable resources for applying technological innovations — from electric buses and charging infrastructure to mobility-as-a-service, real-time transit information systems, and ride-hailing and micro-transit services that complement traditional fixed-route transit.

Industry Context

Rural and tribal transit agencies typically operate with limited staff and budgets, making it difficult for them to independently evaluate fast-moving technologies on their own, which is precisely the gap federal technical assistance centers like N-CATT exist to close. But new technical assistance centers face a parallel challenge of their own: because they are new instruments of federal transit policy, they typically launch without an established way to demonstrate their value to funders and stakeholders. Conventional business metrics built around revenue and profit do not translate to a government-funded, mission-driven organization, which is why frameworks such as the Mission Model Canvas — a variant of the Business Model Canvas adapted for government and nonprofit missions — exist specifically to fill that gap.

Current Situation

N-CATT had begun delivering information-based products and technical assistance services, but had no formal way to measure whether it was successfully achieving its mission. In early 2020, CTAA engaged Iknow to establish the performance metrics N-CATT should use to evaluate its activities and to help develop the business processes and tools needed to monitor performance on an ongoing basis.

• A brand-new organization with no track record. N-CATT had launched barely six months earlier, so there was no program history to draw on and no established consensus about what success should even look like.
• Diverse, sometimes competing stakeholder perspectives. Small-urban, rural, and tribal transit agency leaders, CTAA transit experts, State DOT representatives, and FTA funders all held different vantage points on what N-CATT should be measured against.
• No existing performance framework suited to a young technical assistance center. Conventional business metrics did not fit a government-funded, mission-driven organization, and N-CATT’s own operational processes were still taking shape.
• A need to move fast without overbuilding. With most of N-CATT’s early work project-based, an elaborate administrative measurement framework risked being disproportionate to the organization’s size and maturity.

• Establish a common understanding of N-CATT’s current activities, capabilities, processes, and practices across its stakeholder groups.
• Develop a portfolio of KPIs to measure N-CATT’s strategic, operational, and administrative performance.
• Define the implementation strategy, prioritization, and roadmap needed to put the performance measurement program into practice.
• Deliver detailed implementation plans for N-CATT’s highest-priority metrics.

How Iknow Structured the Work

Iknow structured the six-month engagement into three phases — Current-State Assessment, Performance Measurement Development, and Implementation Planning and Roadmap — moving from a shared factual baseline to a full KPI portfolio to a concrete plan for putting it into practice.

Key Activities & Decisions

• Current-state assessment. Iknow reviewed existing documents and conducted 10 stakeholder interviews spanning small-urban, rural, and tribal transit agency leaders, CTAA transit experts, State DOT representatives, and FTA funders, solidifying a shared strategic vision for N-CATT and a baseline for measuring future progress.
• Strategic metrics. Iknow used the Mission Model Canvas — chosen for its focus on government and nonprofit organizations — to select strategic metrics appropriate to N-CATT’s early stage in its organizational lifecycle.
• Operational metrics. Iknow used the U.S. Department of Transportation’s technology transfer (T2) model, which spans early research and development through full implementation and user adoption, as the starting point for operational metrics, extracting and refining the core business processes directly applicable to N-CATT.
• Administrative metrics. Iknow focused administrative metrics on project management, reflecting the large share of project-based work expected in N-CATT’s first three years, and deliberately excluded administrative KPIs more suited to mature organizations.
• KPI documentation. Iknow recommended 20 metrics across the three groups, specifying for each the metric’s name, key performance question, relevance and importance, possible measurement approaches, cost and level of effort to collect the data, target-setting benchmarks, and practical tips and warnings.
• Implementation planning. Iknow developed an implementation strategy, prioritized the new metrics portfolio with supporting rationale, built a 12-to-18-month roadmap of recommended steps, and prepared detailed implementation plans for the highest-priority metrics.

Stakeholders & Collaboration

Iknow served as prime contractor, engaging directly with CTAA and N-CATT staff as well as external stakeholder groups — transit agency leaders, State DOT representatives, and FTA program staff — throughout the current-state assessment and metrics development process.

Building Consensus Across Very Different Stakeholders

With transit agency leaders, CTAA staff, State DOTs, and FTA funders all holding different views of what a brand-new organization should be measured against, any KPI portfolio risked feeling arbitrary or one-sided. Iknow addressed this by conducting 10 structured interviews across every major stakeholder group before proposing a single metric, building one shared baseline vision that the eventual KPI portfolio could be measured against.

Fitting the Framework to the Organization, Not the Other Way Around

Generic, private-sector KPI templates would not have fit a young, mission-driven technical assistance center still forming its own operational processes. Iknow addressed this by deliberately selecting government- and nonprofit-specific frameworks — the Mission Model Canvas for strategic metrics and USDOT’s own technology transfer model for operational metrics — and by explicitly excluding administrative KPIs designed for more mature organizations rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach onto N-CATT.

Quantitative Outcomes

• Stakeholder engagement: 10 structured interviews spanning four distinct stakeholder groups.
• KPIs delivered: 20 fully documented metrics across strategic, operational, and administrative categories.
• Roadmap: A 12-to-18-month implementation roadmap, plus detailed implementation plans for the highest-priority metrics.
• Delivery timeline: Three-phase engagement completed within six months.

Qualitative Outcomes

N-CATT received a comprehensive, turn-key program for ongoing performance evaluation, with a manageable set of KPIs closely aligned to its mission as a technical assistance center. The current-state assessment itself delivered a benefit independent of the KPIs: it solidified a shared strategic vision for N-CATT across stakeholder groups that had not previously been aligned. In the years since this engagement, N-CATT has continued to operate and expand its programming, including a 2024 data literacy initiative for small transit operators and a cooperative feasibility study on autonomous vehicle deployment with transit agencies in New Mexico. This is a sign of the sustained mission delivery this performance management foundation was built to support.

Timeline to Impact

Iknow delivered the current-state assessment, full KPI portfolio, and implementation roadmap within the six-month contract period, giving N-CATT an operational performance measurement program during its first full year.

Core Skills

• Performance management strategy
• KPI development & documentation
• Multi-stakeholder assessment & alignment
• Implementation roadmapping

Methods & Frameworks

• Mission Model Canvas
• USDOT technology transfer (T2) model
• Structured multi-stakeholder interviews
• Metrics prioritization and phased roadmapping

Technologies & Tools

• KPI specification and documentation templates
• Implementation planning and roadmap tools