Managing The Professional Service Firm by Maister David H

Author:Maister, David H. [Maister, David H.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2007-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

WHO SHOULD HANDLE ASSIGNMENTS?

In order to understand the problems inherent in the design of scheduling systems, let us imagine that a firm has decided to appoint a scheduling “czar” (or “czarina”) to be responsible for all such decisions. What information must be collected in order to make informed judgments?

First, our decision maker would want information about each of the projects: a specific list of the tasks to be performed and, from that, a list of the skills required. This information should indicate when each phase of the project is due and hence what time constraints and flexibility exist. Next, the scheduler would need information on the skill levels and time-phased availability of each of the staff members. If our decision maker really wanted to do the job properly, he or she would consider not only who feasibly could do the work but also how much each individual’s time would cost in relation to the likely productivity and quality of that individual’s work.

Unfortunately, our service firm scheduler has even more facts to collect, absorb, and take into account. What are the professional needs of the individuals to be scheduled? If these have not been determined, the scheduler needs to review the recent assignments for each of the staff members—what industries they have worked in, what tasks they have performed, what roles and responsibilities they have undertaken in their project teams, what geographical locations they have been sent to, with which partners they have worked.

Apart from the objective development needs of the individuals (as determined by a review committee or the scheduling czar/czarina), the individual’s own preferences may or may not be relevant to the decision. Does the individual have a special, personal reason for wanting to work on a particular industry? Does he or she need to work close to home this month? Is there a personal magic between this individual and particular managers or partners? Such considerations may not carry large weight in the assignment process; but if they carry any weight at all, the information must be collected and given to the decision maker.

What of the preferences of managers and partners? Do they prefer to have one professional on their team rather than another? Finally, perhaps our scheduler will want to know if there are client preferences either for individual staff members (for example, on repeat projects for the same client) or for certain categories of staff members (“This is a ‘preppy’ client, so don’t give me Joe. He’s smart, but he’ll rub them the wrong way”). Also relevant to the decision is the client’s relative importance to the firm. If a client or project is a critical one, it should be a higher priority in receiving the firm’s best people. Without good judgment in this area, poor trade-offs in client service and client response may result.

We have already created for our scheduling genius a problem of some complexity. (See Figure 16-2.) There is an extensive data bank of facts, judgments, and perceptions concerning the staff members and the projects.

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