Approach
How we work
Four stages. They are not a methodology we invented and then went looking for work to apply it to. They are what the record shows we actually do, written down.
The sequence
Diagnose
A short, senior review that establishes what is actually true about a programme, separate from what is being reported. Governance, technical architecture, delivery, commercial position, and the people. Two to six weeks, typically.
It ends in a position, not a list of observations. Anyone can produce findings. The value is in saying what follows from them, in terms a board can act on, and in being willing to be wrong in writing.
Reset
Rebaseline against reality. Scope, plan, commercial terms with the vendors, the governance model and the assurance framework, taken through to a decision the board can genuinely approve rather than one it merely receives.
A reset that produces a plan nobody believes is worse than no reset, because it spends the credibility that the next one will need. The test is whether the people who have to deliver it would put their own name to the date.
Deliver
The accountable seat. Steering chaired, vendors held to what they contracted to do, risk owned rather than logged, and the sponsor kept ahead of the programme rather than behind it.
This is the part that cannot be done at arm's length. It means being in the room when the difficult call is made, and being the one who makes it when nobody else will.
Hand back
Into business as usual, and into a management structure that can hold it.
This is the stage most programme people skip. They leave. An external director who builds dependency has not finished the job, they have created a different one. Handing back properly means the operating model, the governance and the open items all have owners inside the organisation before we go, and it is planned from the start rather than improvised at the end.
What we do not do
- We do not sell technology. We take no vendor commission, hold no reseller agreements, and have no product to place. When we say a platform is the wrong answer, nothing turns on it for us.
- We do not staff bodies. We are not a resourcing firm and do not bill a bench against a programme.
- We do not write reports as a deliverable. A diagnostic ends in a decision. If the work product is a document that changes nothing, the engagement has failed.