SFIA Consultancy CNSL

This page provides deep dive guidance and additional material to help individuals and organisations use and apply this SFIA skill effectively. It supplements the SFIA reference material.

NB This page refers to the SFIA skill definition of Consultancy. It is not a description of a SFIA Accredited Consultant or of good practice in SFIA Consultancy projects.

SFIA v6 definition of Consultancy

The provision of advice and recommendations, based on expertise and experience, to address client needs. May deal with one specialist subject area, or can be wide ranging and address strategic business issues. May also include support for the implementation of any agreed solutions.

© Copyright SFIA Foundation

• This is a high-level SFIA skill - which appears at SFIA levels 5 to 7 only.
• The skill is usually over used and applied to more people/jobs descriptions than it should. The SFIA Consultancy skill is not aimed at people who provide advice to others as part of the day to day responsibilities - it is reserved for those who work on client focussed consultancy assignments.
• For day to day advice just use the SFIA level 5 generic responsibility which includes the following “Advises on the available standards, methods, tools and applications relevant to own specialism”
• Its also advisable not to use both Technical specialism and Consultancy - try and choose the most appropriate one.
• A combined analysis using RACI and identified Work Outputs reveals the real skill requirements.

If you are looking for skills relating to:

• specialist advice, guidance and thought leadership; try SFIA Technical specialism
• advice, guidance and thought leadership on methods and tools; try SFIA Methods and tools
• exploiting business opportunities from the use of technology; try SFIA Innovation
• advancement of knowledge in pursuit of a predetermined set of research goals (e.g. academic approach); try SFIA Research
• the identification and assessment of emerging technologies; try SFIA Emerging technology monitoring

• Institute of Consulting
• Institute of Management Consulting USA
• Business Balls - free ethical learning and development resource for people and organizations
• Consultant's mind - Thinking through the Problem
• Consultant's toolkit - library of consulting frameworks for Powerpoint (not free)
• What does a Consultant do?

• Technology Leadership
• Business Architecture
• Technology Consulting
• Business Consulting
• Business Partners
• Business Analysis
• Enterprise Architecture

By focussing on work outputs/work products we can move the focus from activity/knowledge to performance and provide a direct link to business results. See 6 boxes model.

Leading

• senior stakeholder relationships and relationship management plan
• executive commitment to recommendations and plans
• thought leadership
• sufficient resources and capability to enact consultancy projects
• organisational model for provision of consultancy
• consultancy practice vision and principles
• sales and selling on opportunities

Managing

• proposals and costs for consultancy projects
• client relationships
• consultancy assignment management
• effective consulting team
• progress reports
• consultancy agreements/contracts
• assignment close down
• knowledge and skills transfer to client/other consultants
• knowledge management
• reviews to ensure quality deliverables

Doing

• facilitated workshops
• engaged stakeholders
• current state analysis
• capability assessments
• solution roadmaps and plans
• reports
• presentations
• business case
• up to date knowledge and awareness in own area