Re: Developing centres of expertise in a consulting firm

The situation you are describing is, in my experience, all to common. The
key to success in this area, as in most others, comes down to incentive /
motivation. In the final analysis, whether you want people to produce
quality code products, follow best practices in development, adhere to life
cycle development procedures, or to develop / participate in a 'Center of
Excellence', they have to have an incentive...to be motivated. Ignoring the
merits of 'positive' vs 'negative' incentives / motivators, the real issue
comes down to three things:
1. Is there discernable value (to me, to what I do, to my team, to my
organization) to be realized from this?
2. Is there a clear incentive (positive or negative) associated with doing
this?
3. Is value and incentive consistently realized / applied?

Let me use a simple (but real, from experience) example. Suppose you want
programmers to learn and rigorously follow a specified development life
cycle, but don't hold them accountable for it (by considering as part of
performance reviews, for example) and, in fact, 'celebrate' programming
teams that ignore the process while meeting the unstated shop objective of
'getting product out the door on schedule, regardless'. How many programming
teams do you think are going to spend any effort learning or following the
specified life cycle? Going back to my rules above...there is no discernable
value, getting product out the door is 'rewarded', and, of course, by asking
people to do one thing while rewarding those who do something else is
inconsistent.

Looking at the above from another perspective, how to achieve your objective
is also clear. Making it happen is the really hard part. The first step is
to take a clear-headed look at why you want to establish CoEs. If doing it
is for any other reason than to add measurable, discernable value...stop
now. If it is, then determine what that value should be, how you are going
to measure it, and how to measure achieving it.

Having established the value to be delivered, you need to convey that to the
participants and to determine the incentive / motivation needed to assure
its achievement. If obtaining the value objective is either not worth
anything to you or the cost appears to be to high...stop now. If obtaining
the value is worth something, establish the appropriate mechanism for
managing the incentive / motivation process.

Finally, if you get to this point, write governing policies and procedures,
follow them, and hold people accountable for following them.

Best,

Frank J. Hannaford