Ben Collier, PhD

Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar · 2012 to 2016 · Undergraduate

70-453 Business Technology Consulting

70-453

How consultants think, how they interview, and how technology projects get built and managed.

15 students in 2014 and 7 in 2015

I built this course for CMU Qatar from an older systems analysis and design course, and turned it toward both sides of consulting: the business analysis that consulting firms hire for, and the technology work of designing and running a project. The first half was frameworks and case interviews, with Harvard cases on Deloitte and BCG and live practice cases like Harley-Davidson and a fighter jet division. The second half ran a Harvard change management simulation and then moved into the systems development life cycle, UML, agile, and project management. Students in Business Administration, Information Systems, and Computer Science took it together, and it was built to get them ready for a first-round interview at firms like McKinsey, BCG, Accenture, and Bain.

Week by week

Spring 2014 · Sundays and Tuesdays. Scroll the schedule and the slides follow along: five from each session, picked from the decks I taught from.

  1. Part I: The consulting business
  2. Week 1
    Introduction and course overview
    The consulting life cycle, from first contact to reviewBusiness consulting spans marketing, accounting, strategy, management, finance, and technologyThree kinds of consulting interview questions: behavioral, estimation, and caseEstimation warm-up: how many tubes of lipstick are sold in Qatar in a year?London Bank: what are the economics of dropping a $50 annual fee?
  3. Week 1
    Case: Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group Case
    Deloitte, the largest professional services network in the worldA framework for any engagement: context, goals, focus, methods, resourcesThe framework filled in for Deloitte's engagement at SKSWhat went wrong at SKS: retyped orders and hand-written parts listsWhat client and consultant should each have done before the engagement started
  4. Week 2
    Overview of consulting: firms, roles, and skills
    The biggest consulting firms and what they sellA consulting typology: strategy firms, service providers, and technology providersManagement consulting grew from $3 billion in 1980 to $330 billion in 2008Strategy versus IT consulting in the professional services marketWhy employ consultants? Expertise, objectivity, and someone to blame
  5. Week 2
    Case: Innovation at the Boston Consulting Group Case
    Career ladders at Accenture and McKinseyUtilization: hours billed over hours workedRealization: billable rate times hours billedDecentralized innovation: knowledge built across client projectsBCG's choice between exploring new knowledge and exploiting what it has
  6. Part II: Business analysis with consulting frameworks
  7. Week 3
    Business analysis using consulting frameworks
    Warm-up case: is Volvo really the safest car in America?Frameworks are like knowing the anatomy before you operateThings that are not client friendlyAnalysis: break the problem into its componentsSegment your numbers: which segments are losing revenue?
  8. Week 3
    Profitability framework: Harley-Davidson Case
    The profit frameworkE(P = R - C)M: start with the environmentThen the market: how is the client doing against its industry?Questions to ask about revenues and costsHarley-Davidson's stock fell from $54 to $49 on news of declining profits
  9. Week 4
    Profitability: the fighter jet case and segmenting CaseThe Feb 2 session was cancelled
    Segment profit into revenues and costs, then keep goingWays to segment revenueWays to segment costsProfits have declined 10% in the fighter jet divisionWhere the cost of a fighter jet goes
  10. Week 5
    Strategy frameworks: Porter, SWOT, and BCG
    Should Qatar Airways become Qatar Transport and build high-speed rail?Porter's generic strategiesProfitability of US industries, from soft drinks at the top to airlines at the bottomPorter's five forcesThe BCG matrix
  11. Week 6
    The business situation framework
    Microsoft needs help: where should it invest next?Company, competition, customer, and productThe business situation framework in fullThe mergers and acquisitions fit frameworkThe capacity change framework
  12. Week 6
    Case: retail banking in Southeast Asia, with a guest speaker Case
  13. Part III: Managing change
  14. Week 9
    Change management simulation: low urgency In-class exercise
    The fundamentals of business consulting so far, case by caseWhat's next: change management, IT methods, and project managementThe Harvard change management simulation dashboardChange the minds of 20 people in 96 weeks
  15. Week 9
    Change management simulation debrief
    Three phases of organizational change: mobilize, move, sustainKotter's eight stepsWhy individuals resist changeThe typical adoption curve, and where it gets into troubleA strategy for change: who has power and who resists
  16. Week 10
    Change management simulation: high urgency In-class exercise
  17. Week 10
    Change management: context, vision, and pace
    Four scenarios: how much power the change agent has, and how urgent the change isReactive change closes a performance gap, proactive change an opportunity gapWhat makes a vision work: desirable, feasible, relevantIn urgent situations, the build to institutionalization is fasterSustaining change means realigning the technical, political, and cultural
  18. Part IV: IT consulting methods and project management
  19. Week 11
    Systems analysis and design: the SDLC
    What happens in the planning stageWhy plans failThe security auditWaterfall and agile developmentFeature creep
  20. Week 12
    Unified Modeling Language: use cases, activities, and classes
    Why model technology and human processes at all?Codified versus tacit knowledgeA use case diagramAn activity diagram with swim lanes for an orderA class diagram for bank accounts
  21. Week 12
    IT security, guest lecture
  22. Week 13
    Agile versus waterfallThe deck is almost entirely embedded video
  23. Week 14
    Project management
    Integrated project management with the project leader at the centerThe triple constraint: time, cost, and scopeA Gantt chartGartner: two in three IT projects fail to achieve their intended resultDevelopment and operational benefits, tangible and intangible
  24. Week 15
    Review
The consulting life cycle, from first contact to review
Sun, Jan 12 Introduction and course overview The consulting life cycle, from first contact to review

Major assignments

  • Case interviews

    In 2015, each student prepared two interview scripts, ran four case interviews with a partner (two as interviewer, two as candidate), and wrote a three to five page analysis of strengths and improvements for each. A second round followed with a new partner, then a case interview and a behavioral interview with me.

  • Client project

    Teams in 2015 worked through a full engagement for a client inside the university: a client interview graded against a rubric, a five to eight page proposal with a work breakdown structure and cost estimate at set daily rates, a technical design in UML, a user interface design, and a working prototype.

  • Final consulting project

    In 2014, small groups chose a real organization and applied the course frameworks (profit, business situation, SWOT, Porter) to a problem it faced, presented during the final exam period.

  • Simulations

    Harvard's change management simulation, run once in a low-urgency and once in a high-urgency scenario, plus project management and strategy simulations in 2015.

  • Exams

    Closed-book exams, one-third short answer and two-thirds consulting case analysis. In 2014 the midterm and final were 30% and 40%; in 2015 a single final was 20%.

Student work

Every project, by term.

Spring 2014: final consulting projects 5 projects
  • Vodafone Qatar. Looked at Vodafone's launch of Falla, the first Qatari telecom plan aimed at young people, and asked which youth products and services Vodafone should focus on to position itself against Ooredoo. Porter's five forces and a youth-market strategy
  • Zara. Analyzed Zara's vertically integrated, fast-turnover model, including its single distribution center and weak online presence, and recommended where it should grow next. Business situation framework and SWOT
  • A GCC charity supporting Syrian refugees. The charity raised most of its money through events, an unstable source. The team estimated its revenues and costs and recommended ways to increase donations and build a steadier income. Profit framework, SWOT, and business situation framework
  • A yoga studio in Doha. Asked how the studio could grow with the market, cross-sell, and attract new customers, and recommended partnerships with sports and hotel facilities, corporate yoga, and better merchandising. SWOT, competitive comparison, BCG matrix, and Porter's five forces
  • A long-established Doha electronics and video game retailer. Compared revenue and costs from 2011 to 2012, and weighed small stores, limited capital, and the shift to digital games against the store's reputation and locations. Profit analysis from interviews with the general manager and an accountant
Spring 2015: client technology projects 2 projects
  • Visualizing Twitter for academic assessment. A tool to pull a Twitter stream by search term, sort it into threads, and let an instructor grade students' contributions to discussion outside class. Client interview, proposal, UML design, UI design, prototype
  • Digitizing negotiation exercises. A web platform, aimed at the iPad, for running classroom negotiation exercises like New Recruit so that results and scoring are immediate instead of done on paper. Client interview, proposal, UML design, UI design, prototype

Offerings

  • Spring 2014
  • Spring 2015

All courses