How to prevent regression on the project after completing work with a consultant?

When the founder entrusts his project to a consultant, he expects fundamental changes and quick results. Indeed, already at the initial stages of cooperation, one can feel the effect of implemented improvements. However, the first changes do not guarantee long-term success and solving of existing problems.

?At the beginning of the project, the consultant is actively involved in the processes, regularly communicates with the team, holds retrospectives, introduces new values and culture. At the same time, work on technical debt is underway: practices such as Unit testing, CI/CD appear on the project. The processes are gradually changing and improving. The specialists begin to believe in changes, their eyes light up. Finally, the issues that have been bothering the team for years are resolved!?

So, three or six months have passed. Having felt the effectiveness of changes and having received the first successes, the founder decides to continue the path of transformation on his own ? without a consultant and a change manager. And the period of gradual regression starts here. Some time later, the project rolls back almost to the starting point. The founders are dissatisfied, the team is in a state of utter demoralization. The effectiveness of the services received has been lost.

Why does this happen? There are two main reasons that sometimes complement each other and aggravate the situation.

The first reason is the never-ending pressure of business. As soon as the consultant and the change manager leave the project, the focus of the team changes. If the importance of work with technical debt was absolutely clear and undeniable before, now a priority is placed on the speed of deliveries again. However, usually the amount of technical debt on the project is so large that it is simply impossible to solve all the necessary issues in a few months. And it seems that the team got the green light to eliminate technical debt, but at the same time feels again pressure from the management. Specialists fail to complete all the planned tasks on time, burn out and finally quit working on technical debt.?

The second reason is the absence of a change leader who is able to defend the work on technical debt elimination in front of the management and will not allow circumstances to push the work on improvements into the background. I often observed situations when being imbued with a new culture, feeling the value of best development practices, technical specialists greatly grew as professionals. Thus, the change leader with an effective value approach appeared in the team, he supported the necessary practices, constantly showed initiative, and reminded of the importance of working with technical debt. In this case, the project could have good prospects even without further involvement of consultants. By the way, as experience shows, this role is sometimes performed by the founder himself.

Another option is to hire a third-party manager who is not yet familiar with the project at the stage of the crisis. Joining the work in the process of consulting, he focuses on the establishment of a value culture, best practices, and is ready to proactively move the project forward. In this case, the team may also have excellent prospects.?

If the change leader is missing on the project, then there is very high risk that the results of the work carried out by the consultant will be lost and everything will return to the same point from which it began. But in this case, unfortunately, the team will face a huge psychological crisis. And this condition is much worse than learned helplessness.

Once you see that changes are possible, it's much harder for the team to experience regression and stagnation. It would seem that everything is fine, the project is on a new stage, there is the light at the end of the tunnel. However, at one point everything stops and the same problems arise again. Specialists get the confidence that the company is doomed to stagnation. Because even the consultant did not help.?

How to prevent regression of changes after completing work with a consultant? Of course, you should not think that the technical problems accumulated over several years can be solved in just 3-5 months. The improvements made during the first quarter are only a help for regular work, a long struggle with technical debt, and a gradual establishment of effective processes. Therefore, make sure that there is a change leader in your company who will monitor the implemented innovations and prevent regression. This may be a continuation of work with a consultant, a change manager, hiring a new expert specifically for these purposes, or appointment of a specialist within the company. But remember that outside specialists are usually less biased and therefore more persistent and effective in managing changes. As practice shows, those projects on which my consulting team spent more than one year were the most successful in terms of establishing long-term changes, technological progress and self-organization.

If you are the founder of an IT project, try to understand the full value of the changes that the consultant offers you, and do not put pressure on the team. Probably, you would like to maintain the speed of deliveries, but at first it will inevitably decrease. It is worth taking this into account and stop demanding the impossible from the team.

Deep cultural transformations on the project require a high degree of awareness from the team and continuous implementation of regular activities to eliminate problems. With the change manager, all this will be much easier to implement.