The MBA Capstone Consultancy Project: Structuring a Live Client Report

Many MBA programmes now replace or supplement the traditional dissertation with a live consultancy project. It is a different genre of writing, and the most common failure is treating it as a dissertation with a company attached — or as a consultancy deck with citations bolted on. It is neither.

The Two-Audience Problem

Your marker wants theoretical grounding, a defensible method and critical evaluation. Your client wants a decision they can act on next quarter. These are not in conflict, but they need deliberate structuring:

• Put the actionable material at the front — executive summary, findings, recommendations.
• Put the academic apparatus in clearly labelled sections — literature, methodology, limitations.
• Use appendices for the detailed evidence your client will skip and your marker will check.

Scoping: Where Most Projects Go Wrong

Clients almost always present a problem that is too broad — "we want to grow" or "our staff turnover is too high". Narrow it before you agree terms. A workable scope has:

• One primary question, answerable in your timeframe.
• A defined boundary — one product line, one site, one customer segment.
• Named data you will be given access to, confirmed in writing.
• A named client contact and an agreed meeting rhythm.

Ethics Approval Is Not Optional

If you are interviewing employees or surveying customers you will need ethics approval from your institution, and this takes weeks. Prepare the participant information sheet, consent form and data management plan early. Anonymise the organisation if required, and agree with the client what may appear in a document held in the university library.

Method: Small Samples, Honestly Framed

You will likely conduct eight to fifteen interviews rather than a hundred. That is acceptable if you frame it correctly: this is qualitative, exploratory work aimed at depth and transferable insight, not statistical generalisation. State your sampling logic, describe your analysis method (thematic analysis with a coding frame is the usual choice), and be explicit about limitations. Overclaiming from a small sample is penalised far more heavily than the small sample itself.

Recommendations That Can Actually Be Implemented

Each recommendation should carry:

• The specific action, in one sentence.
• The owner — a role, not a name.
• Indicative cost and resource requirement.
• Timeframe, and any sequencing dependency.
• A success measure with a target.
• The principal risk and its mitigation.

Prioritise them. A ranked list of three fully specified recommendations is worth more than nine unranked suggestions.

Structure That Satisfies Both Readers

1. Executive summary — decision-ready.
2. Client and problem context.
3. Literature and conceptual framing — what is already known about this problem type.
4. Methodology and ethics.
5. Findings, organised by theme rather than by interview.
6. Discussion — findings against the literature.
7. Recommendations, prioritised and specified.
8. Limitations and reflection on the consultancy process.
9. Appendices — instruments, coding frame, anonymised transcripts, financial workings.