Consultancy report

In the consultancy track, an SPM assessment is carried out. This assessment is carried out by performing an interview with a product manager, via the Situational Assessment Method as described by Bekkers et al. (2010). The product managers are provided by the lecturers of the course. The Excel-file that you can use for the assessment can be downloaded as Excel 2007 version or Excel 97-2003 version. More information on the capabilities can be found here.

Each group has to hand in four separate deliverables. On the first three deliverables, feedback will be given but no grade. The final consultancy report will be graded by the lecturers. The deliverables are:

• Nov 25: Company description (max. 500 words)
  Give an overview of the company, its history, important figures (turnover, employees, etc.), and products.
  
  
• Dec 9: Assessment results & analysis (max. 1000 words, excl. matrix and situational factor list)
  Present the maturity profile of the company and its situational factors. Make sure you explain the maturity matrix in such a way that the product manager(s) that read your report will understand it. Point out the areas with low scores (and give possible explanations), but also mention the strengths.
  
  Furthermore, give an analysis of the company's product portfolio, for example with the Boston Consultancy Group matrix. Some of you will be interviewing product managers who work in an organization with only one product. In this case, the analysis is probably quite short. When the company has a portfolio of several products, the analysis will be more elaborated.
  
  
• Dec 23: Advice and recommendations (max. 2000 words)
  Based on the assessment and analysis, write an advice on how to improve one or more focus areas in SPM. Make sure that you use the situational factors to ground your recommendations. For example, if the requirements rate of a company is high (e.g. > 40 per month), an advanced requirements prioritization technique is necessary. If useful, also integrate your finding of the product portfolio analysis in this advice.
  
  
• Jan 27: Final consultancy report (max. 4000 words (+50% = 6000 words))
  Integrate the previous deliverables into one report. Make sure you process the feedback that was provided by your lecturer(s).
  
  In addition to your earlier work, we also ask you to include a benchmark in your report. This means that you compare the results of your company with the mean results of all researched companies in this course. This 'average maturity profile' will be provided to you by the lecturers
  
  The structure of your final report could look like this (however, you are free to choose your own structure):
  
  
  • Management summary
  • Company description
  • Procedure
  • Results & analysis
  • Recommendations
  • Appendices

  or

  • Management summary
  • Company description
  • Procedure
  • Maturity profile
    • Assessment
    • Benchmark
    • Advice
  • Product portfolio
    • Analysis
    • Advice
  • Appendices

  Submit your deliverables by emailing them to your workshop lecturer and use the following title for your file: cr_group<number>_<deliverablename>, e.g. cr_group4_assessmentresults.doc. You can submit you files in doc, docx, or pdf format. Also send a copy of the report to your product manager, and as for feedback. Please cc the email to Inge.