Rules of Engagement
February 9, 2006
I am a consultant. Each morning I get up travel to meet clients to help them deal with their own unique challenges. I am not just a consultant, I am also a software developer and truth be told the whole consultant thing is nothing more than another interface that I implement.
Because I implement the consultant interface I am often lumped into a bucket with consultants from other industries and fall victim to the same stereotypes. And there have been various comics, movies and web-sites where consultants are often the cause of much mirth and even ridicule.
At Code Camp Oz this year we are going to have a few sessions which focus on the business side of software development including Dave Lemphers who will be talking about services consulting. I expect these sessions to be quite popular and start a bit of discussion.
Before I can contribute to such a discussion however, I need to really bed down my own thoughts on this strange business that we are in. I’m going to try (no promises) to put up a series of posts about important aspects of being a consultant in the technology business. I can imagine topics such as the following coming up:
- Time Management (cont’d)
- Professional Development (cont’d)
- Conflict Resolution
- Skills Transfer
- Tools and Equipment
So if you are interested be sure to tune in to my feed and I will espouse my personal philosophy on the consulting business and the rules of engagement.
February 9, 2006 at 12:00 am
Daily WTF, excellent! At last Might might shake off the years of Prod Support rust.
February 10, 2006 at 12:00 am
Well now, this certainly does run counter to my “geeks hate capitalism” argument now doesn’t it?
I must be reading too much /.
February 27, 2006 at 12:00 am
I tried looking this up, but about 2 years ago we had a presenter at PADNUG who dealt with the business aspects of programming.
His presentation was incredible, including non obvious things like “the higher up in management you are presenting to, the more powerpoint animation you need to be using”
His first name is Tom, and he is, or was, an attourney.
Anyway, when I read this post I thought of that presentation, I have no idea if that is enough information to go on, I can’t find any reference to the presentation on the padnug.org site.