Stop Consulting Around the Problem

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Consulting   Scope Management  

Consultants are brought in to an organization or a project because of a well-defined problem that needs to be addressed. It may be that the problem is a lack of experience within the organization, or perhaps there is not enough time for the subject matter experts to devote to the project.

Consultants can help address these issues (and more) by providing experienced resources for a limited time to work on a project, or train others in the work that needs to be done. A problem arises when consultants consult around the problem instead of directly overcoming and impacting the issue that needs to be addressed.

Identification
The first step is to identify the problem. When consultants are brought in, there should be a scope statement for what they will be required to do. The more people that understand that scope and the reasoning behind it, the better off the consultants will be. Communication can help smooth over any issues that organizational resources have with the consultants. No one really likes being told that a consultant is going to come in and make the project succeed; it should be the people dedicated to the organization that make it succeed.

However, if the issue at hand is clearly identified (for example, the subject matter experts do not have enough time to become project management experts), then the consultants can be brought on and everyone will be …

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