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DISCOVERY PROJECT

Unlock the hidden capacity in your team

We'll go through your raw PSA data, dashboards, and reports, interview your team, then present findings, recommendations, and a roadmap to surface the hidden capacity already in your shop.

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Why?

The tool is 10% of success. Methodology is the other 90%.

Methodology iceberg: 10 percent above the waterline, 90 percent below An iceberg illustration. About 10 percent of the mass sits above the waterline as a jagged ice peak. About 90 percent sits below, a much larger faceted mass with four depth strata: Daily practices near the surface, then Workflow design, Roles and accountability, and Mindset and culture at the deepest. 10% THE TOOL Daily practices Workflow design Roles and accountability Mindset and culture
The tool
  • Software
  • Boards and dashboards
  • Reports
Daily practices
  • Daily huddle
  • Pull-based workflow
  • WIP limits
  • Single-tasking
Workflow design
  • Workflow stages and swim lanes
  • Triage and dispatch design
  • Capacity planning
Roles and accountability
  • Dispatcher liberated from scheduling
  • PM and service manager roles
  • Leadership cadence
  • Team accountability rhythm
Mindset and culture
  • Lean mindset
  • Continuous improvement
  • Flow over rigid perfection
  • Simplify as a default value
You might recognize this

Two views of the same business

The PM sees the operation. The owner sees the numbers. Same business, different angles. Discovery puts both views in one document so the conversation that fixes things can finally happen.

If you're the project manager

You're basically making it up. Leadership thinks it's the team.

Day to day, you keep the team on track. Every question that matters takes 20 minutes of digging in the PSA.

Capacity is in your head. When sales asks when you can start, you give a number you don't fully trust. When leadership asks why a two-week project took four, you can name a few reasons but you can't prove any of them. You can feel things falling through the cracks before you can show them.

And you know what leadership privately thinks. The team is just slow. The hours aren't lining up. You've heard versions of both. But you know what nobody in the boardroom sees. All this juggling of work is invisible to them. The dispatcher drops reactive tickets onto a tech in the middle of a project. Sales sells the next thing before the last one is done. The team isn't slow. The team is being interrupted.

You're desperate for a view of what your team is actually doing. Discovery delivers it. The report that proves it, and the methodology that makes the view permanent.

If you're the owner, partner, or COO

Gross margin should be higher. You wonder if the team is just slow.

You can see the number every month. What you can't see is what's eating it.

You can't visualize what's actually happening in the business. You can see the revenue, you can see the headcount, but you can't tie either to the project that went over budget again. Margin is lower than it should be for the team you're carrying. The utilization numbers don't line up with what people on the team say they're feeling.

And privately, you wonder if the team is just slow. You've watched people cherry-pick the easy tickets. You've told the team you want better accountability on the billable hours. Every time throughput dips you end up back in another hiring conversation, even though the headcount should already be enough. You keep coming back to the same thought. You keep putting more people on the problem, and you don't want to keep putting more people on the problem.

You want to scale margin, not headcount. Discovery shows you where margin is actually going, using your own PSA data, before you commit to any bigger investment.

Here's the part most MSPs miss

The PM has the visibility. The owner has the authority.

Neither one alone moves the number. The PM can see what's eating the team's day but can't change the rules that put it there. The owner can change the rules but doesn't sit close enough to the day-to-day to know which rule actually matters.

The conversation that fixes this is one neither of you has had yet. Not the polite version from the monthly meeting. The honest version, where the owner stops privately wondering if the team is slow and the PM stops privately defending the team. That conversation needs a shared diagnostic. Discovery is built to be that diagnostic. The readout and the roadmap are made for the conversation between you, not for either one alone.

Deliverables

Discovery ends with a written diagnostic your leadership team can act on. Five concrete artifacts, in plain language, backed by your own data.

Operational baseline
Concrete numbers your team can track from now on. Average project duration vs. estimate, billable hours per engineer per week, WIP per person, project handoff times. Replaces "we're getting better" with a number you can hold up.
Financial picture
Project margin by type, leak points, underbilled work, and what your team is doing right now versus what's actually getting invoiced. Tied to your real PSA data.
Methodology gaps
Where your current process diverges from what works. Single-tasking discipline, pull-based flow, role clarity, daily huddle rhythm. Named specifically, with examples from your own projects.
12-month operational roadmap
Quick wins in the first 2 weeks, sequenced fixes for 30/60/90 days, structural changes over 3 to 6 months. Built so your team can execute, with owners and rough timing.
Implementation considerations
What to brace for. Change-management friction, the engineers who'll push back, the PSA configurations that will need rework. Honest about the work, not just the outcome.
HOW IT WORKS

A 30-day project

TopLeft's founder, Wim Kerkhoff, is the primary consultant for the Discovery Project.

Phase 1: inputs, data, and artifacts
  • You complete two short assessments: Operational Maturity (about 10 minutes) and Agile MSP Daily Habits.
  • Your raw PSA data gets a full read: projects, tickets, time entry, billable hours, and margins.
  • Your PSA configuration comes under review: statuses, ticket types, time-entry rules, and project templates.
  • The reports, dashboards, and client-facing materials your team relies on are examined too.
Phase 2: analysis and custom interviews
  • Interview questions are built specifically for your operation, based on what your data and assessments reveal.
  • Your PM, service manager, and leadership each sit for a structured 30 to 45 minute conversation.
  • One of your real project meetings is observed live.
Phase 3: findings presentation, then the written report
  • Your leadership gets a live findings presentation: what surfaced, the recommendations, and what to prioritize first.
  • You receive the written diagnostic with a one-page executive summary.
  • You get the detailed analysis with the actual data and PSA screenshots.
  • Your 12-month operational roadmap lays out concrete next steps for the first 30, 60, and 90 days.
Wim Kerkhoff

Nineteen years operating MSPs since 2007. I still own ImprovingIT and Crafty Penguins. The mechanics of project delivery, billable hours, margin, PSA configuration: it's not theoretical. It's what I'm running every week in my own shops.

TopLeft exists because I needed it for those shops first. The diagnostic you're paying for is the same lens I apply to my own operations. You're not getting an outside consultant who read three books. You're getting an operator applying the same methodology I use in my own shops to yours, for 30 days.

Wim Kerkhoff
Founder, TopLeft
WHAT'S POSSIBLE

Examples of what other MSPs have achieved

Other TopLeft clients have acted on our recommendations and achieved real results. By putting in the work with your team and Wim's guidance, you can do the same or better.

Reduced multi-tasking
58%
Improvement in project efficiency, completing more projects with the same team.
Steve at TEBA
Implemented pull-based workflow
2x
Project throughput, two months after switching from a critical-chain PM methodology to TopLeft.
Craig at Machado
Implemented pull-based workflow
2x
Revenue with the same team.
Te'neyl at Morgan Birge

The Investment

  • Pricing based on 15 to 20 hours of my time, fixed-price.
  • 50% upfront, 50% on completion.
  • If your PSA data turns out to be unworkable, we'll discuss before continuing.

Have the conversation

Thirty minutes with Wim. Operator to operator. No demo. A conversation about whether the Discovery Project is the right next step for your shop.

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