Had statements of work (SoW) on my mind a lot. Writing some, fulfilling others. What you put in a SOW will affect the quality of your life. Do it well. For the consulting finders, proposals and SOW are the lifeblood of business development. If a fisher, these are baited lines in the water. If a camper, this is wood for your fire. If a marketeer (we all are), then I would say this is at the consideration / trial portion of the purchase funnel.
Statements of Work (SoW) are difficult to do well
Once your proposal has been accepted, it’s time to write a SoW. You’d think that it would be largely a copy/paste exercise from the proposal – yes and no. Yes, we are codifying what we were thinking during the engagement. Definitely keep the parts that the client like, but now it’s time to think about the parts that you dislike. How do we write this thing so it is clear, descriptive, good-hearted, flexible, and useful? How does this serve as guardrails and a metronome for a dance, and not a checklist of “have to do”.
SoWs can be exhausting. If you Google “statement of work” and “pdf”, you’ll find some SoW examples that are 1,200+ pgs long. They almost try to do too much. A typical SoW contains: background, approach, resources, timeline, expectations, metrics, pricing, and deliverables. For professional services, it’s even more nuanced because client satisfaction = expectation – perception, all of which is extremely subjective. Namely, how do you author a piece of paper that keeps the consultant and client in sync (actions, thoughts, and feelings) for the project duration? As we all know, if it involves people – it will be beautiful, fun, and messy.
SOW vary – a lot
No surprise here. Consulting spans everything – industries, functions, and problems. It’s naive to think there is one magic template which would cover all your bases to all situations. Projects vary is size and scale from one-person giving a workshop to Accenture operating a call center here. Energy capital investment, Website restructuring, Retail footprint rationalization, Executive compensation benchmarking, M&A IT due diligence. Those 5 topics have little in common.
Collect them. For those of you joining consultancies, get in the habit of collecting deliverables, proposals, and statements of work. There are definitely similarities and no reason to reinvent the wheel. Often times, just having the outline and headings can keep you out of trouble – make sure you don’t forget something critical. Also, some of the precise wording used by your firm to describe the quality of the deliverables, and pricing can be both legally smart and expedient.
What makes a good SoW?
Here is a description, not a prescription. A good SoW sets the project direction and provides guardrails so that the consultants and client know who, what, when, and why things need to get done. The “how things get done” is where you need to gauge the client’s savvy and personality, and provide just enough detail. You don’t want ambiguity, but you also don’t want legalism. So, in many ways a good SoW helps articulate a shared understanding (better to argue / refine / complain / kvetch before the project starts, not afterwards).
Good SOW = high-level recipe
As a thought experiment, if you AND your client counterpart (the two people leading this adventure) were to disappear, leave your jobs. . . could your replacements carry on well without you?
- Understand the specific situation, context, issues you are trying to solve?
- Organize the work efficiently with little duplication of effort, or confusion?
- Agree on the high-level approach; provide a mechanism for fine-tuning of details
- Know what success looks like; align on deliverable quality and timelines
- Hold each side accountable (with both carrots and sticks)
Following through on the food analogy, “Could they cook the dish (not perfectly, not beautifully), but would it be food?” Would there be table service at the restaurant?
Co-author with the client
When possible, get your client to meet you halfway. Here’s a scenario that has worked well in the past. If you have some client rapport, credibility, and precious time:
- Flush out symptoms and root causes of the problem(s) through client conversations / meetings
- Scaffold the main points and potential solutions; consultants are wicked good at this part
- Have a point of view. For cost reduction, if this is generically what you got, go home.
- Send out the meeting minutes to prospective clients a get their feedback
- Get buy-in on Level 1 (what, who, so what). Then start breaking that down into Level 2 detail (how, when)
There’s fine tuning needed. Have them be your co-author.
From there, it’s up to them. Is there a demand? Is there a willingness to pay? Is it now? Increasingly, I believe this is about positioning. What you have is what you have (usually). At mid-career, you know what products / services / “ah-ha” you are good at. Then the question is – how to map it to what’s already in your client’s mind. Yes, inception.
Are pro-bono SOW different?
I doubt it. For those who swim in pro-bono waters, and know better than I do, feel free to comment. For me, the main difference here is the profit-motive and remuneration. All the other aspects are the same, perhaps more difficult, than one for a for-profit corporation. Clients still want to know:
- What’s in it for me? What are we getting, if this is successful?
- What will you be doing? How much of our time is needed?
- How do you work? Will you be a pleasure to work with, or a gadfly?
- How many chances will I get to (politely) redirect your work, if I think it’s off the tracks?
- How much does this cost? Do you think that’s a fair price? Why?
- What’s not included? Don’t get my hopes up, then disappoint.
Management consulting homework
Teaching management consulting this semester. In 3 weeks, the students need to write up a proposal for a fictitious company called Terrace Fitness. What advice do you have for new consultants writing proposals or statements of work.
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One small tip for your students from my experience: describe what effort/resources you expect from the client. They often seem to think that you’ll be able to do all the work in isolation.
Reminding them of their responsabilities help set the right expectations.
Huge fan of that. Manage up (boss), manage down (direct report), manage client. . .yes, yes, yes. They should meet you half way.
This was very insightful, thank you.
Speaking of my past work, I have to admit that the general mistake of writing a good SOW is when you are trying to write both proposal and SOW simultaneously. Of course this doesn’t work. It’s like you are trying to feed your family with all of the courses at once blending it in one plate) At least that’s what I saw when I recieved one last year as manager in industry. Another meaningful point of this article – deliverables. You should be very precise and definitive about what your client counterparts will receive at the end of the project. Every meeting I’ve attended during this year has ‘deliverable’ in its agenda.
Crazy wise advice, thank you.
I have written many SoW’s and it will differ from client to client. The key is succinct understanding of the problem and how you approaching it, the procurement and governance process to determine the level of effort that you need to develop one. The other critical success factor is the level of relationships at the same level and above. If you feel that the client is unclear, then the SoW should be T&M and sold in blocks of time like an Agile 2 week sprint. Because of the uncertainty and the level of risk is not shared equitably, the approach is great to build a backlog of work. From there, once the client wants certainty and shared risk, then a fixed price SoW with objectives, outcomes, deliverables, milestones, WBS, Workstream packages, RASCI, customer responsibilities, resource mix, acceptance criteria and in and out of scope to name a few needs to be tightened. I have sat with a client over 6 hrs in negotiations once as they where being difficult with numerous mark ups, so always do your homework and be prepared. A clear SoW and expectation also helps the delivery team and avoids the need for internal tension. If you client still wants a SoW and is still fluid, communicate to the client that this may fall into a Project Change Request and that further investment maybe required.
Solid, thank you.
My niche of consulting often has a wide variety of strategic and technical stakeholders, and the legal SOW can be a PITA if shared expectations are not set early and often. Everyone needs an agreement in principle through a proposal deck, then proceed to SOW legal doc. By this time the NDA is long dry and the master services agreement (MSA) is getting through legal. Unsure if MSAs were covered between now and the 2016 mention…having an MSA in force makes it MUCH easier to conduct multiple SOWs with a client.
In the SOW, include the same terminology and graphics as the proposal deck which outlined goals, scope/approach, deliverables, consultant & client roles, timeline, out-of-scope, and price. The SOW contains additional T&Cs applicable to the scope and work location. Overarching agreements such as intellectual property, data privacy and breach procedures should be a reference from the MSA.
The SOW is easy to write and easy to accept when stakeholders have a proposal deck to look back upon. Build out shell versions for Fixed Fee and T&M deals and have your legal counsel approve the baseline language. You’ll save substantial time for yourself and, for companies with outside counsel, your ongoing legal bill.
Amazing.