The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines project scope as “The work that needs to be done to deliver a product, service or result with specified features and functions.” One of your jobs as a buyer of consulting services is to make sure your consultant stays within scope. That is, they are doing the work they need to do to give you what you require and no less or more.
Why no less? This one is kind of obvious. If your consultant is doing less than you need you won’t get what you require. Consultants will do this consciously if they are behind schedule and/or over budget. We see it when we are providing QA for large system projects. For example, the development vendor is behind schedule/over budget and they try and convince the client that they don’t need as much system testing or that the bugs can be fixed after the system is implemented.
Why no more? There are really a few reasons here. First if your consultant is being paid by the hour – it’s costing you money! The more subtle but important reason is even if your consultant is on a fixed price contract doing more costs time. Your projects won’t finish on time. Allowing your consultant to do more may also distract them from doing their best on more critical tasks.
How do you make sure your consultants are within scope? Here are a few simple suggestions that will go a long way to making sure what you need is delivered on time and within budget:
- First every project no matter how small should have a work plan. This can be something as simple as a to-do list or as complex as a full blown task plan identifying task, task dependencies, timing, work effort, staff assignments etc. Don’t worry the technicalities; your consultant should make their task plan available to you.
- You should review the plan before work begins and clearly understand how each to-do or task contributes to the end product you need or want. If there are tasks that don’t appear to contribute ask your consultant why they are in there. If something appears missing ask why it’s not there. Remember every work step should contribute to the end result you hired the consultant to produce. Be persistent until you get an answer you can understand.
- You should review the progress against plan on a regular basis with your consultant. Regular status meetings are a good place for this. Get them to tell you what they’ve done from the plan. Be careful they’re not doing work that isn’t listed on the plan. If they do things not on the plan ask them “why?” If they are skipping tasks on the plan ask them “why?” There may be very legitimate reasons. Perhaps they forgot something that should be in the plan (have them add it to the plan) or there are things in the plan that really don’t need to be done (have them explain why and then remove it from the plan). If there is work you think should be on the plan but isn’t raise the issue with your consultant.
- Last, as your project closes an easy way to verify your consultant has done what they promised is to review the plan to verify that each task is complete. This doesn’t guarantee what they did meets your needs – just that they did what they said they’d do.
Shouldn’t managing the work plan be the consultant’s responsibility? Absolutely. We’re not suggesting you manage your consultants plan – what we are saying is you need to continually verify the work being performed will get you what you need. Believe it or not consultants don’t always think about whether the work they are doing is leading to the result you want. Many consultants get bogged down in the day-to-day work and loose sight of the big picture.
It is prudent for you as the buyer of consulting services to verify the project scope will lead to the result you want.
This is part of a series of articles designed to help clients and their consultants have more effective and efficient engagements.