Cubicle 101: What is a deliverable?

March 25, 6:24 PMLife in the Cubicle ExaminerDudley B. Dawson

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Avoid curves.  Partners hate curved arrows.

It's well known that big consulting firms, like Accenture, IBM, and CSC (and the Big 4) are filled with motivated employees.  These proactive, project seeking, industry expert, knowledge seeking folks are essential to the ingenuity and efficiency of the Fortune 500.  Without them, the mindless army of corporate cube warriors would lead these organizations into the depths of bankruptcy.  

Or at least that's how they think of themselves.  

While these companies may have some talented and intelligent consultants, the true revenue driver is deliverables.  Mountains and mountains of deliverables.

What is a deliverable?
As a new employee at a big consulting firm, it takes approximately 2 minutes before you're introduced to the word deliverable.  You initially discover that a deliverable is just simply documentation of some sort (e.g. Business Requirements).  However, you soon realize that the term deliverable is included in conversations not pertaining to documentation (e.g. Powerpoint presentations).  The problem only gets worse as you continue through your first year.  You discover that deliverables are both tangible and intangible; both essential and unnecessary.  The word escapes definition.  This is often true of verbs that become nouns.  For the purposes of this article, I'll define a deliverable as "something you deliver to a client".  Avoiding specifics is something big consulting firms also enjoy thoroughly.

Why do they have so many deliverables?
The answer is quite simple.  Creating unnecessary work generates more revenue.

Why staff 5 people when you can staff 20?  Why budget a project at 3 months when you can call it 12?  It's a genius plan.  In order to keep the 15 unnecessary consultants busy and fill up 9 months of unnecessary work, you fill it with meaningless deliverables.  Accenture has perfected this through the use of project tollgates (an unfortunate creation of Six-Sigma).  A tollgate is a virtual stop sign for approval of deliverables.  Projects don't continue until they pass their tollgates.  More often than not, these tollgates are made up of 3-6 deliverables.  The over-engineered project "methodology" is an excellent way to blind the client of actual necessary work.  Every good pickpocket knows that distraction is the key to success.

What's in a typical deliverable?
The short answer: bullsh!t. 

My assumption is that long ago, someone created these deliverables to capture the necessary details of a project and ensure its success.  They served as documentation and proper communication for the actual project taking place.  Over time, these deliverables slowly became the focus of the project.  The actual goal of the project became window dressing.  The result is typically what you'll find at any large company today -- deliverables that are high in content and low on substance. 

Even worse, most of these documents are horribly repetitive.  By the time you complete a project, you will have identified who the "key stakeholders" are a dozen times.  Try adding Bernard Madoff or Kenneth Lay into your list to see if anyone notices.

I'm thinking about working for Accenture, IBM, CSC or another big consulting firm.  What can I do to prepare for deliverables?
Whether it be a powerpoint presentation, word document, excel spreadsheet or perhaps even an actual product (very rare), the success of a deliverable can be summed up with these little nuggets of advice:

1. When you are short on quality, add quantity.  Never leave blank space.  Most people just flip through this stuff.  As long as there is content there, they'll skip right over it.

2. Always use a thesaurus.  When someone actually does decide to read it, remember that there are certain words that are more impressive than others.  Critical is better than important, and proficiency is better than expertness.

3. Stay on top of the latest consulting buzzwords.  Deliverables full of consulting buzzwords are more impressive than inventive and usable ideas and concepts.  Use these terms as often as possible: best practice, core competencies, gainsharing, paradigm, segments, value chain, customer centricity.  Wikipedia's buzzword page is also a good place to add even more to your deliverable.  My article about business jargon may also help.
 
4. Copy previous documents.  Never start a deliverable from scratch.  Search endlessly on internal Sharepoint sites, internal search engines or knowledge sharing sites for a similar project.  First order of business is to do a Replace All.  Make sure to update the project name in the document.  This usually gives you about 5-10 days of doing nothing.  If someone asks you to see the progress you've made, send them what you've got.  You may end up impressing someone and you haven't done sh!t.

5. Visio Diagrams.  It doesn't even matter what it is.  Plop 5 different shaped boxes on the document, give them nonsensical labels, provide a topical title and you're a genius.  Make sure to include arrows.  Partners love arrows.

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Cubicle 101 is a recurring article in Dudley B. Dawson's Life in the Cubicle column.

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