prototype & test (student to independent consultant)

MBA to Independent Consultant

How to provide trustworthy & relevant guidance & support

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Design Thinking Action Lab – Prototype & Test

STAKEHOLDERA woman in her late 20s is finishing grad school (MBA) while working part time. She is self-aware, personable (very skilled at networking) and an active learner. She has a talent for creative marketing and storytelling. She wants to work as an independent consultant after graduating, but feels uncertain about pursuing this path and perceives many challenges with doing so.

NEEDShe needs a way to get trustworthy guidance and support that will help her (a) assess the viability and attractiveness of working as an independent consultant; (b) find, win and deliver projects successfully; and (c) perform administrative tasks that are essential for her business.

INSIGHTDespite her obvious talents, she has found it difficult to find steady, meaningful, good-paying project work. She wants to focus on doing creative/strategic work (her strengths) and avoid getting bogged down with administrative or low-value tasks. She lacks experience in many of these areas. As an independent, she feels like she’s on her own and has found it challenging to find resources and/or mentors who can help.

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INSIGHTS• Many more people are working as independent consultants –

including some people just starting their career

• This path has many challenges

– How to find & win project work

– How to deliver the work

– How to get paid by clients

– How to get (and pay for) administrative support

– How to price services

– How to write proposals and contracts

– How to get mentorship and coaching that’s relevant to her consulting projects

• Schools provide very little guidance or tools for pursuing this path

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Ideas to Prototype

Most Practical

“The Consultant Portal”Online portal with resources for independent consultants and their employers (best practices, training content, sample contracts, statements of work, invoices, etc.)

Most Disruptive

“eHarmony for Consultants”“Auto assigner” … machine intelligence solution where consultants are automatically assigned to projects that are ideally suited to their skills, experience and interests… and perfectly matched with the needs of the client / employer

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“The Consultant Portal”

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Resources for Consultants & Employers

Home For Consultants For Employers

Sample Content

Social / Interact

How to Find Projects

How to Market Your Services

How to Write Proposals

How to Deliver Projects

Getting Help

Best Practices

Sample Content

Social / Interact

How to Find Consultants

How to Write Project Postings

How to Determine Rates

Compliance with Laws & Regs

How to Manage Consultants

Best Practices


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How to Find Projects


How to Write Proposals

How to Deliver Projects

Getting Help

Best Practices



Consultative Selling

Networking

How to Get Referral Business

How to Uncover Needs

How to Price Services

How to Create a Website

How to Create a Blog

Blogging Best Practices

Newsletters

Seminars

Public Speaking

Understanding Objectives

Defining the Project

Defining the Approach

Structuring the Proposal

Project Management Basics In-Progress Reviews

How to Find a Mentor

How to Do Administrative Tasks

Bookkeeping Basics

Should You Incorporate?

Finding Support Resources

Additional Resources


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Proposal Templates

Sample Statements of Work

In-Progress Review Template

Invoice Template

Client Satisfaction Surveys

Sample Content


Allow Comments

Post Questions / Answers

Integrate with Social Networks

Social / Interact

Test: Interview 1-AUSER COMMENTS

• “This would be useful. This is a site I could use.”

• “Finding projects is my biggest priority”

• “How can I get my foot in the door at X and Y *large companies+?”

• “It’s a challenge to get your name out there.”

• “I never have time to blog or do the marketing I should be doing”

• “It’s hard to know how much to charge… It seems like I always have to defend my rates. So help in this area would be great.”

• “Sample proposals would be helpful”

• “What about project plans?”

• “How do I find and use mentors. I really feel like I’m on my own… How would the site help with that?”

• “Is there a way to help people find mentors?”

• “Why are you trying to cater to both consultants and employers? Where’s the synergy?”

• “What if you allowed job postings” (to attract both consultants and employers)

INSIGHTS / LEARNINGS

• For this user, the sample content & templates would be helpful (nice to have)

• The real value is from providing ways to find new project work and to find mentors.

• Finding mentors is a priority, but this user seemed skeptical that this portal would address that need very well.

• This user provided a number of useful suggestions…

– Including sample proposals and sample project plans would be helpful.

– Trying to cater to both consultants and employers may be unnecessary or even distracting

– Either focus on consultants only, or find a way to create value from the participation of employers (e.g., having project postings)

• In general, this user had a positive reaction to the “Consultant Portal” prototype.

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Test: Interview 1-B

USER COMMENTS• “The high level concept sounds good.”• “How do I know if independent consulting is

right for me? Some guidance in that area would help me.”

• “How about info on how to define service offerings?”

• “There are a lot of different types of consultants (management, marketing, technical, …) What type of consultant will you cater to?”

• “Will the site content apply to all types of consultants”

• “Where are you going to get all the content?”

• “Will you allow users to share their own content/templates?”

• “How do I figure out if I’m qualified”• “How do I get training”• “What’s an ‘in-progress review’?”

INSIGHTS / LEARNINGS• This user had a positive reaction to the

prototype, but seemed skeptical that it would be helpful to her specifically

• She was unsure about being an independent consultant so info in this area would help

• She pointed out the many different types of consultants and questioned whether the site would be able to cater to all these different types

• She offered the idea of allowing users to submit content samples to help address this

• Some specific suggestions for content to include:– How to determine if independent consulting

is the right choice– A “qualifications” checklist might be helpful– How to define service offerings– Different sections for different types of

consultants might be helpful– A glossary would be helpful; not all the terms

are widely known

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ObjectivesMust-havesNice-to-havesLocationBudgetEtc.

SkillsExperienceInterestsLocationRatesEtc.

“eHarmony for Consultants”

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Matching Consultants & Projects

Independent Consultants

Companies with Projects

“Auto-Assigner”

Project Matches

Project Leads Candidates

Test: Interview 2-A

USER COMMENTS• “This would be great! It’s exactly what I

need”• “No more cold calling!”• “What type of information would I need to

enter?”• “How would it work?”• “Sounds too good to be true”• “Maybe you should call it ‘Match.com for

Consultants’ rather than ‘eHarmony’” (since it’s for temporary work)

• “If you could actually figure out how to do this it would be really valuable.”

• “Wouldn’t you need to collect a lot of info on culture, personality, etc.?”

• “Seems like it would be really hard.”• “Where would you get the data to do the

machine learning?”• “It’s a little scary to think that a machine

could determine our career path. But then, people are finding their life partners this way, so why not, maybe it’s not that crazy?”

INSIGHTS / LEARNINGS• If such a system could be built, it could

actually be really useful• The users initial enthusiasm started to wane

as she thought about the challenges and likely limitations in implementing it

• We would (presumably) need to get access to a bunch of data to create a machine learning algorithm to do this matching

• A “proof of concept” or some sort of pilot that demonstrated the efficacy of such a matching system would need to be developed

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Next Steps

• Both ideas seem to have merit

• For the first prototype ("Consultant Portal"), the next step would be a more refined prototype that incorporated the users' feedback

• For the second prototype (“eHarmony for Consultants”), the key issue is whether this is even possible, so the next step would be to test/assess the feasibility of developing such a system

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