Doing It On Your Own: When to Call in the Consultants, When to Leave Them Out
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This document discusses three different approaches an organization took to large projects based on whether they used consultants, a partnership with consultants, or handled projects internally. The first project, an Exchange migration, was fully outsourced due to specialized expertise needs, a hard deadline, and staff already at capacity. The second project involved both internal staff and consultants, with consultants providing specialized support, training, and flexibility due to high costs of delays. The third project, a website conversion, was handled internally due to staff expertise and no hard deadline, though it took longer and required fixing errors. The document evaluates advantages like staff development and flexibility, versus costs like time and opportunity costs.
Doing It On Your Own: When to Call in the Consultants, When to Leave Them Out
- 1. Doing It On Your Own: When to Call in the Consultants, When to Leave Them Out #12NTCDoing Pam Kingpetcharat Gabriel Nichols
- 2. Evaluate This Session! Each entry is a chance to win an NTEN engraved iPad! or Online at www.nten.org/ntc/eval
- 3. 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
- 4. Your Organization’s Consultants / IS / IT Team Team of Consultants Context
- 5. • Current ongoing Know your workload Organization’s IS / IT Team • 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 Prepare
- 6. Clearly define: Statement of Work • Problem being solved (SoW) / Terms of • Key questions remaining Reference (ToR) • Required expertise • Preferred process for contract • Expected deliverables • Expected timeline & timing penalties Request: • Recommended approach & timeline • Management plan & risk analysis Use the process to • Staff to be assigned explore & test solutions • Cost quote Define
- 7. Consider: • Needs based on ‘define’ phase Strategy / Implementers Management / Integrators • Size of your organization relative to Contractor • Contractor IT Service Independent Providers Contractors specialization & track record • ‘Fit’ with your organization Shop
- 8. Considerations: • Expertise in-house • Credibility / need for (long/short term)? objectivity | politics? • Comparative • Pros / Cons / Risks / advantage? Cost / Timing Evaluate by objective scoring: Criteria Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Recommendation Experience & track record Demonstration Management plan Consultative approach Cost Select
- 9. Standardized project update memo Kick-off meeting Completed this week, To be done next week, Key issues to be addressed (requiring client attention), Pre-scheduled check-in Project risks meetings on deliverable due dates Regular weekly project updates Manage
- 10. Final documentation Close out presentation / meeting Provide formal feedback Ensure payment close out Internal documentation & ongoing relationship management Evaluate
- 11. Leaving the Consultants Behind Completing large scale projects without outside support
- 12. 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
- 13. 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
- 14. 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. Questions to Ask
- 15. 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
- 16. 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
- 17. 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 Three projects, three approaches
- 18. 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 Advantages
- 19. 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. Costs