A consultancy wins a six week engagement. Week one is meant to be interviews and data gathering.
Three of the five people needed are on leave or unavailable. The data exists in a system nobody has export rights to. The sponsor who bought the work is travelling and no substitute has authority to unblock anything.
By the end of week two almost nothing has happened. The consultant will be judged on a timeline that was destroyed by conditions established before the work began, and nobody discussed any of it at scoping.
1. Establish who must be spoken to
By role, with names where possible, before anything is priced. A consultant who lists these at scoping discovers the constraints while they can still be designed around.
2. Establish whether those people know
Astonishingly frequently they do not. People pulled into interviews they were not told about are unhelpful, and a sponsor who has not communicated the engagement has created the first obstacle.
3. Establish how much of their time is needed
In hours, stated plainly. A sponsor who agrees to an engagement without agreeing to the time it requires from their people has agreed to something that cannot happen.
4. Establish what data is needed
Specifically. Not a general request for information but named reports, systems and periods, so somebody can confirm whether they exist before the engagement starts.
5. Establish what form the data is in
Exportable, or locked in a system, or only visible on a screen. This determines whether a week of analysis is a week of analysis or a week of manual transcription.
6. Establish who can grant the access
Systems access frequently requires somebody who is not the sponsor, and the request takes longer than anybody plans. Starting it before day one saves a week.
7. Establish the confidentiality arrangements early
What can be shared, under what agreement, what must stay on site and what cannot leave the organisation. These are resolvable and they take time.
8. Establish the internal counterpart
One named person who can unblock things quickly. An engagement without this runs at the speed of whoever happens to reply.
9. Establish what happens when the sponsor is unavailable
Holidays, travel and competing priorities are certain over any multi week engagement. A named deputy prevents a fortnight of waiting.
10. Establish whether anybody is opposed
Some engagements arrive into a context where somebody does not want them to happen. Knowing this at scoping is far better than discovering it in week two.
11. Establish the site and system practicalities
Building access, network access, equipment and whether a consultant can work from their own machine. Small things that consume whole days.
12. Price the access constraints honestly
An engagement with poor access needs more time or narrower scope. Saying so at scoping is the difference between a delivered engagement and a disputed one.
13. Write the access requirements into the proposal
As a stated dependency. This converts a later delay from a consultant's failure into a shared and previously agreed condition.
14. Ask the access questions at the enquiry, not the kick off
An assistant that asks who must be spoken to, what data exists and in what form, who grants systems access and who can unblock decisions establishes at the enquiry what most consultancies discover in week one. Scoped as in consulting enquiries that need scoping before a call, delivered as in implementation questions after the recommendation, with the same access gathering as quote questions that need photographs and access and the discretion in how to handle sensitive questions in your chatbot. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under consultants.