CC Pace knows where software gets stuck

Tim VanTassel’s mother wanted a better return on her savings. She was 80, used an iPhone and went cross-country skiing. Opening an online bank account ought to have been straightforward. The bank’s identity check, however, could not verify her. Her son, a financial-services executive, was exasperated. Then a bank employee called, walked her through the process and won the customer.

VanTassel told that story in a 2023 CC Pace essay about banks and credit unions competing with fintechs. His surprise is the useful part. The digital journey had stumbled, but the organization had a way to recover. Someone understood the entire process, including what happened after the screen said no.

That is a good place to begin with CC Pace. Its business occupies the awkward space between buying technology and getting an organization to use it well. Sometimes the missing ingredient is software. Sometimes it is an experienced business analyst. Sometimes the people who own the problem need to sit together.

The programmer in the middle

Consider the National Student Clearinghouse. Its researchers needed to refine the rules used to match student records. Those rules were embedded in application code. Changing them required a programmer and a software release. As the data warehouse grew beyond a billion records, the system also faced performance problems. Research depended on an increasingly cumbersome chain of technical intervention.

CC Pace built intake, matching and reporting tools. Crucially, the matching engine let analysts supply their algorithms through web interfaces as XML files, without changing the engine’s code. The firm’s account says researchers could alter matching rules while the system remained running. A useful way to read this project: the team moved control closer to the people who understood the question.

The lesson travels. When a routine business adjustment requires a technical specialist every time, the architecture has created a queue. A buyer can copy the diagnostic question before commissioning anything: which decisions should the business be able to make for itself?

A small firm with several toolboxes

Co-founded by Michael Gordon in 1980, CC Pace developed around business and technology consulting, with particular depth in mortgage banking and financial services. Its service mix grew to include custom software, Agile coaching and training, DevOps, risk advisory and specialist staffing. These are different ways of entering the same client organization.

A lender may need help selecting or implementing a loan origination system. A technology leader may need a developer or project manager. A delivery team may need coaching in how to organize its work. CC Pace sells professional expertise through those engagements. The commercial unit is the assignment, the placement or the training engagement; there is no central subscription product at the heart of this story.

The overlap is its market position. General staffing suppliers can fill roles; software vendors can sell systems; large consultancies can manage extensive programs. CC Pace makes its case through experienced practitioners who understand both delivery and the client’s business. That distinction matters most when a hiring brief contains words whose meaning changes from one industry to another.

Give people something to disagree with

For Ceca Foundation, which recognizes exceptional caregivers, the assignment was a nomination platform. Participation depended on people finding it easy to use. CC Pace delivered working software every two weeks and demonstrated it to stakeholders on the same rhythm. Feedback could concern an actual experience, rather than an imagined one.

There is a modest discipline here that organizations can borrow: make the interval between an assumption and its test short. A demonstration is useful when someone can change the next piece of work in response. Without that authority, even a fortnightly meeting can become another performance of progress.

“The whole experience was a real surprise to me.”Tim VanTassel, on the human help that completed his mother’s digital bank application

At NIH’s National Center for Biotechnology Information, the work extended beyond software rituals. CC Pace assessed development teams across three business lines, then helped implement a transition involving policies, processes, organizational arrangements and co-location. The implication is practical: coaching has less room to work when leaders leave the surrounding constraints untouched.

The price of a smaller question

CC Pace’s data-governance paper describes a law firm struggling to research FCC licenses across separate datasets. It consolidated records, linked ownership and location information, added a lookup application and established a daily feed with validation checks. The reported investment was fewer than 100 hours. That is labor effort, rather than a dollar price, but it gives the buyer a useful sense of scope.

The constraint matters. A focused repository answers a focused problem; it cannot automatically settle every question about an enterprise’s data. Before copying the approach, identify the records, the owner and the decision it must support. Otherwise a small application can inherit a very large argument.

The lending work offers a warning about what can fail first. In a modernization paper, CC Pace’s authors compare two projects from their experience, including a failed mortgage implementation at another consultancy. They describe distant executives, slow communication, inexperienced leadership and unproven technology. Their proposed safeguards include independent estimates, explicit risks and continuous decisions about the minimum viable release. This is useful advice for a buyer because it changes the brief: appoint someone who can resolve trade-offs, rather than merely report them. Hiring more engineers will not resolve a business sponsor’s refusal to choose.

The relationships have a new owner

CC Pace reports 90% repeat clients, 80% referrals and average team tenure above 12 years. Treat those as the company’s description of its relationship economics. They suggest a business whose next assignment often begins with someone who already knows its people.

In 2026, that business joined Mitchell Martin. The buyer announced the acquisition in May, effective June 1, retaining the Fairfax office. Its employee-owned structure and broader recruiting network were central to the stated rationale. The website now routes visitors into Mitchell Martin’s services and jobs.

For a prospective client, the useful starting point remains concrete: identify the bottleneck before choosing the engagement. Is work waiting on a technical skill, a business decision or a system that makes every adjustment difficult? CC Pace’s projects are interesting because the answer changes. The assignment should change with it.