CHAPTER 26
O’Byrne & Kennedy: A Firm of the Future
At the beginning of Part IV, Chapter 18, four common defenses for timesheets were laid out:
1. Pricing
2. Cost accounting
3. Project management
4. Measuring productivity
Then in the following chapters of Part IV, the replacements for both the billable hour and timesheets were explained: price-led costing; appointing a Chief Value Officer and Value Council; Key Predictive Indicators; and After Action Reviews.
This chapter will bring it all together through the words of the partners of O’Byrne & Kennedy (OBK), a chartered accounting firm we met in the previous chapter on sharing knowledge and performing After Action Reviews, and in Chapter 13 on firing the wrong customers. Now allow them to tell their story of how they made the last step of their transition from a firm of the past to a firm of the future by trashing their timesheets.
Tragically, Paul O’Byrne passed away in November 2008, but his legacy lives on through the work of his partner, Paul Kennedy, and the firm they founded. This is their story, in their own words.
Case Study: Getting Rid of the Timesheets
By Paul O’Byrne
We were frightened of trashing our timesheets. As a general practice working for owner-managed businesses, everyone in our practice had grown up with them; it was what people in practice did. Over the years, we had developed very good patter explaining how time-cost billing worked, why it was best, and—we were very good at this—why fixed prices were ...
