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When Should a Consultant Question Decisions?
bay43270 asks: "Presumably, companies hire consultants because they need technical expertise. At some point (if not on a daily basis) a consultant is asked to do something that isn't in the best interest of the company (and therefore may not be in the best interest of the consultant in the long run). The consultant must ask 'do I just say "yes sir" and go to work, or do I try to explain things? If so, how hard do I push?' When should a good consultant question a decision, and how does the situation differ with contract programmers?"
The money is good..thats a plus. The company in question has zero clue on anything computer related, IE why im hired... however, the programmer... wants citrix for remote administration to a domain controller.. citrix, for remote admin...cause he does not like terminal services.. How do you fight this?
This is, in fact, a very simple situation. Get your marching orders in writing. Document your objections and suggested solutions in writing. Get the employer's reaction in writing. In the end it's their ass that's on the line, not the contractor's, and you have the documentation to prove it.
Believe me, it works.
Pointing out the "best" course of action can be worse than neutral. Your job is to point out the "winning" course of action. If it is a MS shop, then .NET is the answer. If it is a Java shop then J2EE is the answer. If it is a PHP shop then PHP is the answer. You can figure out the rest.
At least you have to try and do your job, which is to make good decisions for the company (and hence you). From there it all depends on their response.
Where I'm working now, I was presumably brought on board to "reign in the process" and actually introduce some hint of software engineering to the sheer chaos that was/is our development process.
With images of bringing my past experience (well-regimented development cycles, CASE tools, etc.) I charged ahead. Only to discover very early on that what they WANTED was all the speed of seat-of-the-pants no-process chaos, with all the reliability and stability of a proper S.E. environment.
Yep, you can envision the outcome. It's been over two years now and I essentially gave up. I did manage to bring a few actual software engineers on board (our other developers are non-CS majors). I'd say we've gone from SEI Level 0 to Level 0.5.
But they pay me and treat me well. In this market you can't cherry-pick your jobs. The chaos drives me insane, but being able to pay the mortgage has its definite benefits.
Though I do dream of a place where requirements don't change daily and control-/data-flow analysis roams free and strong....
If you are truly a consultant, then you are paid your fee for doing what your contract stipulates. One of the critical legal distinctions between being an employee and being a consultant is that an employee has a stake in the company's future, whereas a contractor is strictly a temporary resource being used to fit the particular needs of the company at that time.
I've always been very careful to stay out of such things unless they are directly covered under what I am supposed to be doing. For example, back when I did SAP consulting, my job was to devise the role assignments so as to avoid collusion between employees. When some group (I believe it was Finance), wanted to create combined roles just to 'make it easier', I stepped up. My job was to ensure that the new roles had a minimal risk of collusion and Finance wanted to do something directly contrary to that. In that case, I took it to my contact person (note, NOT my boss) and explained. He then had the Finance group meet with the consultants to justify their need (they were shot down).
However, if it's a question of implementation or something, like where the client is bringing you on to do 10 tasks, if those tasks are the wrong tasks to be doing or incorrect - too bad. You get paid to do your contractual assignment.
Look at it this way - the company went out of their way to bring you on as a consultant rather than a regular employee. (Note I did not say 'hire you') There's a reason for that - they believe that you have certain talents and skills that can directly impact one of their objectives. You weren't brought on to create the objectives.
Things can get very ugly, legally, if you and your client begin to act as if an employer-employee relationship exists.
Microsoft had this sort of problem a few years ago where they had all these permatemp contractors. Basically people they didn't want to hire full-time so they just called them consultants, but continued to use them over and over on different assignments. The permatemps argued that they were really full-time employees and sued for a fair chunk of change, and won. Consequently, if a company brings you on as a contractor, they want to do everything possible to make sure that the distinction exists, lest you sue them for backpay, overtime and benefits. For that reason I think you'd be totally out of line speaking up.
You're a consultant, finish your job there and move on to the next client.
...and it works like this: speak up freely anytime a new decision bothers you. After you've made your case, if things don't change, reconsider your position. If you're still firm, revisit the issue later, and make a better case. If things don't change, grit your teeth and build to spec.
I figure this gives the team some checks & balances where input can come from both sides, and both sides have a chance to reconsider and restate the issues if need be. But it doesn't drag things out too much -- after two discussions, we're moving on, regardless of the happy-level. The major challenge here has been upper management, only because they haven't done the math. They always want to blame the developer or contractor, and insist that if management made a bad decision, it was up to the people working on the project to raise a stink, multiple times if need be. This is of course untenable, because it implies that a project could drag out indefinitely, as people revisit, re-revisit, and re-re-revisit an issue. I find my objection/revisit rule rule to be good, but it has to be backed by something only I am willing to do right now: take the blame when I make a crappy decision and refuse to listen to input.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
When you CYA make sure that you do it in some sort of trackable form. A phone call or face to face conversation can be denied or forgotten. Make sure that you do something that you can keep a copy of like send and email. Then you will always have a copy of the warning and it will have sent to and a date in the header. It is also good to cc it to bunches of people and your secure server on Sealand. It may sound like overkill, but this sort of paranoia has CYA'd me many times.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
I think this is really unethical. If you take the job, then do the work. Doing a lousy job not only going to hurt you, it's going to hurt your reputation.
But you're not doing a lousy job - you're doing exactly what you were paid to do. Legally, consultants are supposed to make a minimal number of decisions that are typically made by the full-time employees, unless that is the express reason for them being there. Consultants are supposed to get in and do what their assignment is. In cases where you are supposed to be deciding policy, ultimately your work will come out through a full-time employee. That is, if you develop a new Email Policy because you're an email consultant, management is going to implement the policy you recommend. YOU are not going to implement anything.
One of the biggest problems for any consultant on projects is "scope creep". A good project manager will ensure that the client gets all that he has paid for, and no more. If the fee wasn't enough - too bad. The consuitant loses. If it was accurate or generous, he makes some money.
What the original poster is describing is the "extra mile" above and beyond the agreed scope. Consultants who do this for free too much go broke.
Sometimes though, if the fee was generous and the client is a regular, it's worth it to keep their business.
We aren't talking about saving the world or doing good deeds here. we are talking about business.
The labourer is due his hire.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Trackable info is GOLD. Take the following which happened to a guy I know at the same company I'm contracted to:
.doc files .doc .docs .docs .doc .doc
Guy I know got fired from [US printer company], then hired back as a contract. When working the contract, a full time employee complained about the quality of his test matrix, so they scheduled meetings and re-wrote it. Both of them kept notes, and both emailed the other with their copy of the notes to make sure they had all the same info. She complained again, then they did the meetings, re-wrote the notes, etc etc. It went on like this for about 7 iterations:
1)need more test cases
-doubled # of test cases
2)need test overviews seperated into different docs
-seperated into 3 different
3)need more test cases
-added test cases to each
4)need fewer
-combined to 2
5)too many test cases
-reduced test cases in each
6)don't like formatting of
-used different fonts, spacing, etc
7)too many test cases and docs
-combined docs; reduced test cases
8)[yelling] you are a terrible engineer (I kid you not)
-take it up the butt because you can't talk that way to employees but they can to you.
The result of this month of run-around that she gave the guy was that she didn't like him and wanted his project canceled and delayed (ie no work for months) so that a different contractor could be brought in to do the same job . . . one that would do the work just how she wanted it (YES MAN) but with out her actually doing the work.
At meetings with the VP of the contract agency, and meetings with the [US printer company] bosses the guy presented 300+ pages of printouts including each iteration of the test spec, the notes from each meeting, and all emails between them (he auto logged all emails). The VPs concluded that the guy did an excelent job of fulfilling the job requirements, but that because she didn't like him his contract would be canceled. The contract firm VP admitted privately later that this is very common with [US printer company] and there is absolutely nothing that could be done about it. Since both bosses agreed, the guys record was not adversely affected, but he still can't work in her division ever again.
When you offer your trained expert opinion to an idiot, expect nothing less that idiocy in return.
Hopefully this isn't a common experience with other companies and other contract workers.
robi
Yes but typically the more the client pays you, the more he respects you whether you deserve it or not, and will listen to you if/when you give advice. Otherwise you will just get on your employer's nerves by giving him advice that he would warrant as being worth only what he is paying you.
Why wouldn't you tell them? Especially as a consultant. You don't have to outright refuse what they say, but you can ALWAYS argue the bad ideas.
Simply approach them, tell them you have concerns about the methodology, and go over, in detail, what you think is bad about the idea. If they shoot down your opinions, implement their bad idea and if it fails, use it as leverage the next time around. But always stick to that- when you bring it up, tell them that you think it's a bad idea, but you'll do it anyway if they won't heed your warning.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
There is a form of consulting that is distinct from the kind you are discussing. Often a consultant is working with a consultancy company. In that case, the consultant must consider the relationship between the company and the client. It is always correct to discuss any such major issues with your company in this case -- and be guided by how they want to deal with it.
:)
Yeah I did this kind of stuff for about a year or so before I went off on my own (and began that SAP stint)... My company which contracted me out had pretty strict rules. If we had concerns with how or what we were supposed to be doing things, they were to be done through them. That is, my boss back at the consulting company would be the one to make the call to the client, not me. The reason for that was because I was officially acting on their behalf, so they wanted to CYA as well.
Man I wish I still had my handbook, but it said something along the lines of "unless instructed by your boss otherwise..." basically that unless I was contracted to set objectives, make decisions and whatnot, any concerns had to go through my employer, not the client.
It's sad really, but it's all in an effort to prevent being sued. So many times I wanted to be able to just say "oh yeah, here's how you do that", but that was outside the scope of my employment, and my employers contract with the client, so I couldn't.
I quit there after a year
And yes - anything and everything MUST be writing. Conversations are easily denied or twisted, then it's you, the contractor versus the people suing you.
Be it consultant or fulltime I usually put my opinon of a solution in writing if I don't agree with it. I also explain why I consider it a bad solution and offer (if possible) an alternative solution.
If the client then decides to go ahead with the original plan regardless of my opinion that is fine with me, in the end it just means I'll most likely come back later to fix things, but because it's "on the record" chances are slim to none that they can put the blame on me.
So it's self preservation with an ethical twist.
M.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
I think there is a critical difference between a contractor and a consultant. The former is hired to complete a specified task (the more specific the better). The latter is hired to provide information, knowledge, expertise, etc. in order to make better decisions.
In my experience working as a consultant and contractor, the terms are used interchangably. I always went by what my contract said I was brought on to do, not the title that was attached to my position. Titles really mean nothing - it all comes down to the bottom line: What are you being paid to do? I wish I would've had a chance to read the original posters contract, but it sounds like he is the code-monkey type who doesn't like something in the project, not directly related to his task. It would be TOTALLY different if he was hired as a project management consultant.
When you hire a lawyer, you are explicitly seeking her advice and guidance. When you contract with a programmer to develop something from *your* requirements, it's questionable whether that type of person should be questioning the objectives, regardless of what you call them. That programmer's relationship with, and obligations to the client is entirely and only defined by the written agreement between them.
I was working in something similar and the "computer guy" in the office wanted things done in a certian way. (Now if he was worth anything why am I here? And why is he running AOL over their xDSL?!) but after trying to get the point across that what they were asking for was basicly to get raped online and not getting anywhere I shrugged and did what they wanted. "Customers always right" hahahah NO. A few weeks later they were mad as hell demanding that I fix this mess (after all I was the "expert" in spite of the fact I was forced to do what this idiot "in office computer guy" demanded) and was told if I did not I would be "held responsible for losses incurred". I took that as a law suit.
From that point on I just walk if in a situation similar and have re written the terms of agreement they have to sign. Not that will prevent a suit from being filed but it might help.
Sometimes you can't reason with people. Money or no money, do your job right. In the short term you might loose a client or 2 but in the long term you will be better off and your reputation will shine like a knight in armor. That is your best sales pitch as well, a fab reputation and word of mouth.
Right, wrong, irrelevent. What is, is.
I use this for an interview question now when looking for new employees.
Back when I was consulting, I worked for a company A that held large numbers of personal records for another company B. The company B wanted to implement a sign-on that wasn't secure. A brute force attach could gain entry to the entire company's records.
Despite objections of Company B, Company A insisted on the insecure sign-on. So company B, where I was a consultant, implemented it. (Later Company A's security review people rejected it, so it never went on-line.)
The question that came out of it, if you were a consultant and ordered to implement something insecure, would you? If I deliver the question correctly, most of the people I interview say they would do as I ask. Even if it would expose the records of hundreds of thousands of people.
Faced with losing your job, or the possibility of compromising other peoples records, most people choose the job.
In the case of this job, I chose to hit the road and never regretted it.
I'm a canadian who worked for a swedish company in the US. Conflicts between the US and Swedish management were amazing ...
...
US : "The customer wants this feature in the product"
SW : "We shall discuss starting a pre-study then"
US : "When when that be ?"
SW : "We will get back to you next week"
US : "So next week we will know if our feature will be in the product ?"
SW : "Next week we will know when we can get together to discuss starting a pre-study on that feature"
Of course the rest of the conversation cannot be repeated
Sweden had a very inclusive management style which was great, but slow - no single point of blame. The US had a very individualistic aproach, which was empowering and exciting and quick - and you knew who to fire !!
Short and sweet. As a _professional_ consultant, your client's best interests ARE your goals. You will fight eloquent, long, hard and do _everything_ possible to ensure your clients the best possible outcome. Ass kissing [implicitly to the point of inaccuracy] is to fail professionally.
Anyone who's been a real consultant for 10 years or more is welcome to reply. Anyone who hasn't lasted 10 years or more is not qualified to. If you haven't walked the walk, shut up.
If you take a well written requirements specification, which outlines the business, technical, financial, training, integration, etc requirements of a system and show it to ten tekkies, my experience is that you'll get pretty similar solution designs from all ten.
Arguments about approach only seem to happen in my clients when the requirements aren't defined properly.
Therefore when I find myself in a situation where I'm seeing client recommendations that don't make sense, I always offer to document their requirements for them. Most stakeholders actively want to assist in this process, and in doing so I find that they talk themselves out of the bad ideas and into good ones.
So I'm not telling the customer they're wrong, I'm subtley showing them a laundry list of things they may not have considered - psychologically more friendly.
I'm a Canadian who did software development in Stockholm back in the 1980's, and did a lot of motorcycle touring as well when I was there.
My experience was similar to those expressed by the other posters. It was not a perfect system, in part because the tax shelter for research and development encouraged a rather relaxed attitude toward project management, but at the same time people in the Swedish industry seem to avoid a lot of the posturing and domination games that we see so often here in North America.
To my mind, another significant advantage that Sweden has is in the area of labor relations. The legislation is pretty straightforward, and all parties seem to be in general agreement with it. Thus, not much time is wasted in power struggles between capital and labor.
I think that both these factors contribute to the atmosphere of collegiality that other posters have described. It favors the consultative process, and probably lends some respect for the contributions which consulting professionals can make. On the downside, I found Swedish culture to be rather insular on the whole, which I expect would be a challenge for the social networking part of the consulting business.
One final comment on culture. Living in Sweden for a couple of years, I came to understand that from that distant perspective, Canada and the States are really not easy to tell apart. That was really weird, guys. I wasn't comfortable with that at all!
Let me lay out the scenario I was in, and then give you my advice:
I was consulting for a medium sized ISP on the East Coast, managing their Unix servers, helping with their Sybase system, as well as keeping their web presence up. One day, the guy in charge of the HTML development decided that they wanted to stream audio and video from the site (it was associated with a newspaper, and had a radio station as a client). Well, they came up with an inflated number of streams that would need to be served simultaneously, and thus they wanted these expensive SGI boxes that were tops in serving streamin media.
I did an analysis on their presentation, came up with more realistic numbers, and showed the manager that using a more mundane Unix server (a Sun box), they could easily get two Sun boxes for the price of one SGI box, and feed the streams that way. In addition, we had three flavors of Unix in house, and adding a fourth flavor would be exponentially harder to support.
Manager took my advice, chose to go with the HTML guy's choice, and I got the grand job of getting these SGI boxes going. Well, I did, I got them going and kept them going. They never got the number of subscribers that they projected, and the project eventually got shut down.
In short, let them know your points, but let them know that you're flexible and willing to work with them in any way that they want.
You know... its good to be careful when dealing with upstarts... some of them upstarts from yesteryear you might recall...
:) We're all about the money, they're all about staying alive... who do you think's gonna win that one?
:)
Dell,
Microsoft,
Apple...
AOL?
You remember them right? I hear they pay good money these days. It probably would have been good to have gotten on their good sides when they started out... be they good, evil or downright draconian and satanic in their practices... being in good with Microsoft will probably have paid good money period... especially with possible return business... And whether dells suck or they rock for you, I'm sure being on their good side and doing a great job when they started out and first needed to expand woulda put you on thier top notch list for later.
"preferred contractor" I believe is the term used in the government. And I would know, I've done some work in construction for the gov't. Preferred contractors ALWAYS get the bids, unless an upstart can show absolutely better work for significantly less. Preferred contractors generally get that status doing ONE or two good major jobs or several smaller jobs. Once on that list you're guaranteed return work and even get return calls about upcoming jobs you might be able to perform. Even though our first contract with them was roughly a 10k project (and in construction for the gov't I'm sure you know 10k projects usually involve minute profits, barely worth the markup).
Thus do NOT dis those little jobs, do them right and you'll get return work that might be more to your caliber in skills and pay.
I've probably not done as much IT consulting as you, but I'm sure with your attitude it might explain why they're farming work to India. Even if those people's best often sucks, most of them try, so they can keep their jobs. Plus if the average programmer there is half as good as my mentor was during high school, I'd say we're doomed to lose all our jobs to be farmed out to India
-DaedalusHKX
PS - yep, I'm an unemployed programmer/networking geek... and guess what? I do office and construction work for a living... at least I'm in damn good shape thanks to lugging all that heavy crap around... how many OTHER geeks can claim that
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
If you have a sign-off on a project then if you aren't happy with something, you are within your rights not to sign. However, you had better have justification, i.e., not liking Microsoft isn't good enough.
As a real consultant, you are paid for your opinion. The opinion you present is not the final decision, that is usually for the business to decide. I agree that you should present not only the recommendation but also your criteria and accept that you do not know the full picture (i.e., Steve Ballmer may sit on their board).
See my journal, I write things there
Find out what the Client needs.
Convince him that's what he wants.
Convince him that it was his idea in the first place. (This is important. The Client is the smartest guy in the room--just ask him!)
Deliver what the Client needs while meeting the requirements of budget, functionality, and schedule.
Make sure the Client's looks like a f***ing genius in front of his bosses.
None of these are optional. If the consultant fails to do any of the above, the consultant does not get invited back to do the next job!
Having said that, I have the good fortune to work for a Client (for the past year and a half) who actually is the smartest guy in the room. If you ever have a Client who knows what he wants, lives in reality, and is committed to doing what is needed, cherish him! A Client with a full CNS (both a brain and a spine) is a rare jewel.
Most clients will sit the consultant down and say "Please shoot me in the foot.". When they do this, the consultant must explain that "this is going to hurt; do you really want to do this?" If they insist, the most you can do is be ready with bandages.
Some clients will ask you to shoot them in the head. By this, I mean doing things that will cause any safety concerns/violations or catastrophic financial consequences. Best you can do there is refuse to do the work.
I happen to have the good fortune to work for a Consulting company where the President stands by such decisions. I (and the Engineers working for me) have had the rare occasion to tell a Client "No, we won't do that. "It's unsafe" or "the liability is too great". In every instance, the President has stood behind us.
One final word: Pride. Forget about it. The Client is always right. There is nothing that will get you banned from the jobsite faster than embarassing the Client in front of his boss.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick