Fujitsu Services, a European IT services company, has found from recent research that team changes, however small, within outsourced IT consultancy projects can equate to a 'loss of confidence' by the customer. The situation is so serious that a third of companies interviewed are thinking of putting legal terms into contracts to limit or control the number of team changes.

Rob Devlen, head of business consulting at Fujitsu Services, said, "IT consultancies will have to begin showing initiative in this direction and start incorporating team change guarantees into the contracts before they become mandated by customers. Any team changes that need to be made will need to be managed more carefully. Currently, 58 percent of companies interviewed, experience team changes of three or more throughout the duration of the project, with 4 percent of projects experiencing over 10 team changes."

The issue with team changes on an IT project is to do with the impact that the team change has on the overall success of the project as well as the team dynamics and overall relationship with the client. One specific way to understand this is by looking at the way in which the company is structured and, by association, its project teams.

Devlen says, "A 'pyramid style structure', with increasing numbers of resources as you move down and through the grades, can lead to more detrimental team changes. For example, a project structure with two senior consultants and four junior consultants would mean that if one senior consultant was moved onto a different project this would lead to greater instability and uncertainty with regard to direction for the junior members. On the other hand, if a consultancy has a model that resembles a kite (ie the bulk of the consultant base is highly experienced) there tends to be less of an impact on the project team if one of five senior consultants is moved on. There still remains the similar high level contact with the client and the work can be easily shared among the remaining consultants so the client does not see any dip in project output."

Fujitsu has developed certain parameters to consider when a company is looking to engage an IT consultancy. These include:

1. What is the shape of your consultancy’s team structure? If it’s a pyramid, team changes will have a significant impact. If it’s a kite, team changes will have less impact.
2. Confirm the level of senior management involvement there will be during the project’s duration.
3. What checks does the consultancy use to ensure delivery is being achieved?
4. Is there is a cultural fit between you and the consultancy?
5. Does the consultancy have clear and defined approaches and methods for undertaking the work?

At the end of the survey, it was seen that 24 percent of companies interviewed already set the number of team changes in the contract. However, compared to the rest of the industry, this is still too small a number and it highlights that there are still many areas that need addressing to ensure a smoothly run IT change project using an IT consultancy company.