The Naked Project Management Method

We’ve seen Consultants so good, that the client is afraid to do anything without the approval of the consultants, and other relationships so poor, that status meeting regularly end in tears.

The aim of the Naked Project Management Method is to strip off your consultants’ fancy suits, wheelie suit cases and heavy documentation and work together as a transparent team.

Consulting 101. If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.

Consultants have a bad habit of producing loads of documents, strategy papers, diagrams and holding loads of long meetings.  These are all important and crucial to the success of many projects, however, there comes a point when the project needs to start, hard decisions need to be made and build needs to begin.

Productivity Tip – Strip your consultants bare and explain to them that you value documentation and meetings, however, you’re only really going to measure progress by working solutions delivered at regular intervals – ideally 2-4 weeks.

Consulting 102. Everything is pretty much on track.

Another bad habit of the consultant is to always tell your client that things are “going to plan”.  This fascade is often kept up as long as possible.  The sad thing is, that often this is left so late that not much can be done about it once the news is delivered

Status Tip – Ensure your Agile Consultants deliver real, working solutions every few weeks. This way you’ll always know the true status of the project.  If you find out early, you can do something about it.  Including getting a new team of consultants!

Consulting 103. Land and Expand

Get someone on the ground with the client, then bring in as many new consultants as possible.

Sometimes this is a saviour and as the consultancy has access to a global pool of talented people, this alone can save the project.  The negative is that it is often not clear who is doing what, or even how many consultants are on site until the bill comes each month!

Teamwork Tip – Make sure that all of your teams are no larger than 7 or 8 and that everyone is clear who is doing what in each team.  Make sure all the teams are talking to each other.