- Engagement structure is a key determinant
of how much work you'll need to do
and how profitable a given engagement will be.
You'll need to scope out deliverables,
team resources on both your side and the client side,
timelines, and the methods you'll use to deliver the work.
Getting agreement with a client on engagement structure
before work begins will prevent scope creep
and missed expectations.
Engagement management has five major phases:
proposal, kickoff, delivery, closure, and archive.
The proposal has a project charter
with three key components.
A statement of work with background, scope,
approach, and assumptions.
The SOW specifies the deliverables
that'll be provided to the client.
It'll have a high-level project schedule.
And it'll highlight project resources
and their general assignments.
These components describe
how you'll manage and deliver the project.
Kickoff is about information gathering and dissemination,
as well as planning information gathering activities.
You'll submit data requests
and collect client-specific or project-specific tools.
You'll distribute industry, company,
and issue background information to the team.
You'll schedule preliminary interviews,
meetings, and workshops.
And you'll establish and document goals
for the project team members.
I'll cover delivering the work
in other movies in this course.
During project closure, package your results
and confirm your final deliverables
meet client expectations.
If they do, you can close the engagement.
You'll want to capture your intellectual property
during the project closure phase too.
Document insights and research
so others know what work you did
and so you can reuse interesting frameworks
and approaches on future engagements.
If you have a team working for you, hold a project debrief.
Assess lessons learned.
Give your team members performance evaluations
coming out of the project.
Depending on the size
of the consulting firm you're building,
you may or may not archive your project work.
Knowledge is a powerful asset,
but only if it's captured, documented, and shared.
Build time into the engagement work plan for team members
to document their insights in sanitized case studies.
Use common templates and an archiving database
so future teams can find your work.
Don't just capture
"Here is the problem and how we solved it."
Go beyond that.
Document interesting and insightful analytical approaches.
Look at interesting market insights.
Capture team or engagement tools or effective project plans.
Other teams will thank you in the future.
Engagements are treasure troves of learning.
Invest the time in capturing the insights you generate
on your projects.
If you run a solid engagement process,
you'll find it's repeatable, efficient, and effective.
Just be sure to learn from every project you run.