Doing It On Your Own: When to Call in the Consultants, When to Leave Them Out #12NTCDoing

Pam Kingpetcharat Gabriel Nichols

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Prepare: What you need to know before you consider consultants

Define: What you need to do to clearly set the ‘bar’ for service and performance

Shop: Where to look for the right team

Select: How to establish a system to objectively weigh choices & estimate risk

Manage: How to increase the probability of success

Evaluate: How to learn & build on each engagement

Topics for discussion

Context

Your Organization’s IS / IT Team

Consultants / Team of

Consultants

Prepare

Know your Organization’s IS / IT Team

• Current ongoing workload

• Larger expectations for performance

• Each person’s responsibilities, capacities, capabilities

• Each person’s areas of interest & desired growth path

• Vision of IS / IT at organization

Define

Clearly define: • Problem being solved • Key questions remaining • Required expertise • Preferred process • Expected deliverables • Expected timeline & timing

penalties Request: • Recommended approach &

timeline • Management plan & risk

analysis • Staff to be assigned • Cost quote

Statement of Work (SoW) / Terms of Reference (ToR)

for contract

Use the process to explore & test solutions

Shop

Strategy / Management

Implementers / Integrators

IT Service Providers

Independent Contractors

Consider:

• Needs based on ‘define’ phase

• Size of your organization relative to Contractor

• Contractor specialization & track record

• ‘Fit’ with your organization

Select

• Expertise in-house (long/short term)?

• Comparative advantage?

• Credibility / need for objectivity | politics?

• Pros / Cons / Risks / Cost / Timing

Considerations:

Evaluate by objective scoring: Criteria Option 1 Option 2 Option 3

Recommendation

Experience & track record

Demonstration

Management plan

Consultative approach

Cost

Manage

Kick-off meeting Pre-scheduled check-in

meetings on deliverable due dates

Regular weekly project updates

Standardized project update

memo Completed this week, To be done next week, Key issues to be addressed (requiring client attention), Project risks

Evaluate

Final documentation

Close out presentation / meeting

Provide formal feedback

Ensure payment close out

Internal documentation & ongoing relationship management

Leaving the Consultants Behind Completing large scale projects without outside support

Questions to Ask

What expertise does the project require? 1. Does your internal staff have/can the get that

expertise

2. Will you need that skillset moving forward for additional projects/maintenance of the new systems

3. Is this a growth opportunity for someone on your staff?

Questions to Ask

What is the deadline? 1. Is there a hard deadline by which completion

is required?

2. What costs, in budget, additional work, and opportunities lost will slippage cost

3. Are internal stakeholders sufficiently committed to the project to accept setbacks

Questions to Ask

What resources do you have to devote to this? 1. Your staff have full time jobs, can you devote

the time for training and work?

2. Be realistic. When an expert gives an assessment of time expected for a project you should add 50%, for internal staff triple it.

Three projects, three approaches

Exchange 2007 – 2010 migration 1. Fully outsources, staff managed

2. Clearly defined SOW with concrete deliverables and specific timeline

3. Transition needed to be completed by set date to fit in with larger infrastructure plans

4. One time task, expertise would not benefit the organization moving forward

5. All staff were fully committed to other projects. No ability to make space

Three projects, three approaches

Network/Application Redesign 1. Partnership between internal and external

assets

2. SOW was flexible, project evolved as conditions changed

3. Time slippage was expensive but original systems could continue without error

4. Consultants provided planning support, specialized expertise and training for staff on continuing maintenance

Three projects, three approaches

CMS Website conversion 1. Internal assets only 2. Staff included a web publisher expert in

HTML/CSS for template design and developer who could do PHP coding

3. No set deadline, separated from a larger project which had been too large to gain organizational support

4. Website is dynamic with frequent changes both to content and structure. Having the expertise to do this internally has improved responsiveness and flexibility.

5. Success in this step helped produce buy-in for larger project which will be out-sourced

Advantages

1. Budget – there was none, this project served as a proof of concept for further investment in the website

2. Staff Development – during the project the web publisher taught himself PHP and started learning mySQL

3. Flexibility – because staff were completely familiar with the structure and design of the site they are better able to make changes going forward

4. Greater Internal Understanding of Systems - Discovery process for the project taught us about strengths and weaknesses of the site we otherwise would not have gained

Costs

1. Time – Project took 6 months from beginning to rollout during which time we did not have the benefit of the new system which a more experienced firm could have deployed far more quickly

2. Wasted Effort – four months in we realized that we had made a key error in the design of our templates and information infrastructure. While this did not require starting from scratch it required significant additional effort to fix.

3. Opportunity Costs – the time staff spent on this project were not spent on other work.

Questions/

Discussion?