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Advisory

Expert-led IT assessments and workshops

Fixed scope, fixed price, delivered by our consultants.

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Scope → Assess → Recommend
Overview

Avocado's Advisory engagements are short, fixed-scope assessments and workshops that show you where your technology stands and what to do next. Each one is led by senior consultants across quality engineering, observability, cybersecurity, software delivery and AI, and finishes with a prioritised set of recommendations you can act on, with or without us.

Featured engagements

Our most requested starting points

Advisory

Governance Framework Review

Know exactly where your governance stands.
Advisory

Cybersecurity Maturity Assessment

See your security posture against recognised frameworks and know what to fix first.
Advisory

AI Strategy Workshop

Identify and prioritise the AI opportunities worth pursuing.
Fixed scope, clear outcomes

Know where you stand and what to do next

Every Advisory engagement is a short, fixed-scope assessment or workshop led by senior consultants, finishing with a prioritised set of recommendations you can act on.

Talk to us about an assessment

What's included

Every Advisory engagement answers a specific question in a set timeframe. Choose a review to understand where you stand today or a workshop to decide where to go next.

Reviews and maturity assessments

Diagnostic engagements that benchmark your current state and show you the gaps that matter.

Cross-practice

Governance Framework Review

Know exactly where your governance stands.

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Quality Engineering

Test Strategy and QA Assurance Review

Get an independent view on whether your testing will hold up.

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Quality Engineering

QA Maturity Assessment

See how your quality practices measure up.

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Software development

Architecture Review

Uncover gaps before they become expensive.

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Quality Engineering

Test Automation Maturity Assessment

Find out what is holding your automation back.

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Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity Maturity Assessment

Find out where your defences fall short.

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Observability

Observability Maturity Assessment

See what your monitoring is missing.

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Software development

DevOps Maturity Assessment

Find the fastest ways to improve your delivery pipeline.

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Strategy and enablement workshops

Forward-looking engagements that help your leaders set direction and make confident decisions.

AI and Data

AI Strategy Workshop

Identify and prioritise the AI opportunities worth pursuing.

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AI and Data

AI Readiness and Feasibility Study

Test whether an AI idea will work before you commit to building it.

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AI and Data

AI Leadership and Governance Workshop

Equip your board and leaders to guide AI adoption with confidence.

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Why start with an assessment?

Most technology problems are easier to solve once they have been measured. Testing that keeps slipping, alerts nobody trusts, audit findings that return every year: each usually has a small number of root causes, but without an independent view it is hard to know which ones to tackle first or how to make the case for investment.

An Advisory engagement gives you that view in weeks rather than months. You get an objective baseline, a clear picture of your biggest risks and opportunities, and a roadmap your leadership team can back. It is also a low-risk way to see how we work before committing to anything larger.

Why choose Avocado

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Practitioners, not just advisers

Your engagement is led by consultants who deliver this work every day, not a generalist team working from a template.

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Specialists across the technology lifecycle

Our teams span quality engineering, observability, cybersecurity, software delivery and AI, so findings reflect how your systems actually connect.

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Grounded in Australian context

As an Australian-owned firm, we assess against the standards and regulations that apply to you, including frameworks such as the Essential Eight, APRA CPS 234 and the SOCI Act where relevant.

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Recommendations you can act on

Every engagement ends with prioritised recommendations your own team can deliver. If you want support, we can help, but there is no obligation.

How our engagements work

The same simple structure, every time

01

Scope

We agree the questions you need answered, who we will speak to and the timeframe, and confirm the fixed scope before any work begins.

02

Discover

We run stakeholder interviews and workshops, review documentation and, where relevant, look at your tooling and data.

03

Assess

We benchmark what we find against recognised frameworks and industry practice, and identify the gaps that matter most.

04

Recommend

You receive a clear report and prioritised roadmap, walked through in a playback session with your leadership team.

Not sure which engagement fits?

Tell us what you are trying to solve and we will recommend the right starting point.

Talk to an expert

The engagements in detail

Test Strategy and QA Assurance Review

Get an independent view on whether your testing will hold up.

Who it's for

Organisations relying on an external vendor or delivery partner for a major build, or heading towards a go-live, that want an independent check on the testing behind it.

What we look at

Your test strategy and plans, coverage against requirements and risk, the vendor's test cases and evidence, entry and exit criteria, defect management, and test environments and data.

What you get

A findings report with gaps rated by severity, practical recommendations, and an independent assurance view you can take to your steering committee.

QA Maturity Assessment

See how your quality practices measure up.

Who it's for

Organisations where testing is informal or inconsistent across teams, or where a growing pipeline of projects needs a reliable quality baseline.

What we look at

Testing methodology and governance, roles and responsibilities, testing levels and sign-off, defect and risk management, requirements traceability, tooling, metrics and user acceptance testing.

What you get

A maturity baseline, a gap analysis against good practice and a prioritised roadmap to a consistent, repeatable quality capability.

Test Automation Maturity Assessment

Find out what is holding your automation back.

Who it's for

Teams still relying on manual regression testing, or whose automation has stalled, become brittle or stopped delivering value.

What we look at

Current automation coverage and framework design, tooling, maintainability, integration with your delivery pipeline, team skills, and where automation will return the most.

What you get

A maturity score, a prioritised list of automation opportunities and a practical roadmap your team can follow.

DevOps Maturity Assessment

Find the fastest ways to improve your delivery pipeline.

Who it's for

Teams whose releases are slow, manual or risky, or who want to know how their delivery performance compares with good practice.

What we look at

Your build, test and deployment pipeline, environments, release practices, security controls in the pipeline, and delivery metrics such as deployment frequency and lead time for changes.

What you get

A baseline against recognised delivery metrics, the bottlenecks slowing you down and a prioritised set of improvements.

Prefer to start on your own?

Try an online self-assessment

Our online self-assessments take around five minutes and give you an indicative view of your maturity in a specific area. They are a useful way to frame the conversation. When you want an expert-led, evidence-based picture, an Advisory engagement goes much further.

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What's the proof?

A few examples of where an Advisory engagement has made a difference.

Bringing financial crime compliance into one governed program

Bringing financial crime compliance into one governed program

How an Australian mutual bank turned seven-plus separate reviews into one prioritised, auditable program of work in eight weeks.

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An independent architecture review before a major build decision

An independent architecture review before a major build decision

How an asset finance provider got an honest, independent verdict on its new originations platform before committing further investment.

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Independent testing assurance for a national clinical registry

Independent testing assurance for a national clinical registry

How a national not-for-profit healthcare association gained an independent, client-side testing function for a nationally significant platform rebuild.

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Building an enterprise quality assurance capability for a water utility

Building an enterprise quality assurance capability for a water utility

How a state-owned water utility moved from ad hoc testing to a structured quality assurance capability it owns outright.

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Moving a regulated medical platform from manual to automated testing

Moving a regulated medical platform from manual to automated testing

How a global medical technology company replaced manual permission testing with a maintainable automation framework its own team can run.

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From a year of firefighting to a scalable platform in weeks: Hollard Insurance

From a year of firefighting to a scalable platform in weeks: Hollard Insurance

How a small Avocado team resolved performance issues a large vendor group couldn't — fixing latency, scaling the platform, and rolling out Dynatrace across Hollard.

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One pane of glass: how HBF Health unified monitoring with Dynatrace

One pane of glass: how HBF Health unified monitoring with Dynatrace

How HBF Health replaced fragmented monitoring with Dynatrace and Avocado — real-time visibility across 10,000 assets and 30+ hours saved every month.

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A $95 billion ‘Big Bang’, delivered with certainty

A $95 billion ‘Big Bang’, delivered with certainty

How Avocado led end-to-end testing and independent governance across eight streams to take a major super fund's new platform live — catching risks the vendor had missed.

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Frequently asked questions

What is an IT assessment?

An IT assessment is a structured review of part of your technology environment, such as security, testing or observability, measured against recognised frameworks and good practice. It shows you where you stand today, where the gaps are and what to prioritise next.

How long does an Advisory engagement take?

Most engagements run for a few days to a few weeks, depending on the scope and the size of your organisation. We confirm the timeframe with you before any work begins.

What do we receive at the end?

You receive a findings report, a prioritised roadmap and a playback session with your leadership team. Workshops also produce a documented output, such as a prioritised list of opportunities or a leadership playbook.

Do we have to use Avocado to implement the recommendations?

No. Our recommendations are written so your own team can act on them. If you would like help delivering them, we can support you, but there is no obligation.

How is this different from your online self-assessments?

The online self-assessments are short questionnaires that give an indicative score based on your own answers. An Advisory engagement is led by our consultants and draws on interviews, documentation and, where relevant, your tooling and data, so the findings are evidence-based and specific to your organisation.

Which engagement should we start with?

Start with the area causing the most risk or friction today. If you are not sure, talk to us and we will recommend a starting point based on your priorities.

Deliver with certainty

Find out where you stand

Book a conversation with our team to scope the right assessment or workshop for your organisation.

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