Over the past 5 years we’ve seen a significant increase in the take-up of part time, or what we like to call ‘thin slice’ Service Management Consulting. In essence, this is the use of our experienced Service Management team, but just on a part-time basis, or for short assignments.
This can be anything from running a few workshops on a specific topic, or a day per week for a few weeks or months. Or of course it can be a longer-term initiative, but only working part time to meet the demand, without the need to justify a significant investment or overkill on the resourcing requirement.
This approach has significant benefits to our clients:
No long term / full time commit of a contractor
Rapid access to highly experienced Service Management specialists in ITIL, Agile, DevOps, SIAM etc
The ability to tap into external best practice knowledge and 20 years + experience
Clearly defined solutions with agreed outcomes and timeframes
The ability to work part time or ‘as a service’ i.e. ‘Problem Management as a Service’
Commercial flexibility, including fixed price, with tightly defined solutions
Off-Payroll experts working outside IR35 on outcome-based contracts
Management oversight from The ITSM People, de-risking the ‘contractor off the street' scenario
This style of engagement does not necessarily work for the large, long-term projects, where an individual or a team of consultants need to be dedicated to the task at hand, such as a large-scale transformation. However, this too can work as a blended model also.
For example, we are working with two large global clients currently, who are both being sold by their parent companies. This is resulting in the need to have an entire team supplied by us, to assess and benchmark the existing operating model to help them recreate their catalogue of services and create new support models for the new target operating model, as well as re-engineering all of their key ITIL processes. In both of these cases where different skills and activities are needed for different tasks within the workstream, we can blend a part time initiative for a few days per week, such as working with the internal team to build out the Service Catalogue, whilst working alongside other members of the full time team, who are re-engineering all of the processes and bedded in the new operating model.
Of course this can also be a stand-alone activity and the following list provides some example assignments where our ‘thin slice’ Service Consultants have parachuted in and provided that short-term/part-time help for our clients:
Bursts of specific initiatives, such as Problem Management or Service Improvement
Building Service Catalogues or documenting services
Driving specific Service Transition projects
Re-engineering and implementing individual or multiple processes
Advising on strategy or supporting large projects with Service related dependencies
Running Service Management related workshops, such as RACI sessions, or process overview sessions
Service Management related coaching to internal team members
This list is not exhaustive of course, but hopefully helps to outline that there are a great deal of important initiatives that often don’t start or get over-looked, because the existing internal team are too busy, or it’s just too difficult to justify going out to market to get a full time consultant for 3, 6, 9 or 12 months.
This is where we can step in, to help you consider and implement some of these important ‘mini’ projects that never get off the ground, or to help support those larger projects that only need a slice of someones time, but the existing internal team are already maxed out.
If this issue affects you and your team and you'd like to learn more, please contact us to discuss your challenges and we'll explain how flexible we can be to help you – hello@itsmpeople.co.uk
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