How to Get the Most Out of Your Consultant
Being a manager of software engineers is a tough business. Especially when you need to call in outside help and are forced to wrestle with how to get the most out of your consultant.
If you’ve been around awhile you’ve likely heard all kinds of stories, some victorious and some disastrous. While you can never guarantee that bringing in a consultant will go perfectly there are things you can do to stack the deck in your favor.
I’m primarily referring here to consultants who are brought in to solve a specific problem or work a project. As opposed to consultants who are brought in as staff augmentation.
Clear Objective
Having a clear objective just makes sense, right? Well, unfortunately too many people struggle to adhere to this simple precept. I’d venture to guess that a great many bad consultant engagements were caused by unclear objectives.
It’s also important for managers to let their team members know what the consultant is brought in to do. This insures that everyone is on the same page. Nothing derails a project quicker than the key stakeholders being unaware of who they should be working with.
Simply put, a host company should define a clear “what” the consultant is there to accomplish. The “how” should be the consultant’s purview.
The host company can of course choose whether or not to implement the consultant’s “how.” Ultimately, being crystal clear with these distinctions up front can save a lot of headaches and failed engagements.
Willing to Implement Change
It’s a story as old as the software industry. Some legacy software is running in Production and has some big problems. Maybe it’s buggy or too slow and is generating a lot of support issues.
The code has grown too complex so the developers are hesitant to push even the simplest of changes. Regression testing takes weeks and a release takes months. This is usually when consultants are called in to reign in the beast.
The consultants pour over the unruly code base and propose decomposing the massive hairball into more manageable services. This will be a major effort. The host company tends to seize up at this point and kick the can down the road.
It’s understandable though as a large code refactoring seems to offer no immediate business value. It’s the opportunity cost wherein lies the value however. The more tech debt accumulates, the harder it is to adapt to the always changing business climate.
Any company that engages consultants will only benefit maximally if they are willing to implement change. This can be a tough sell up the ladder.
Too often the C-Level personnel fail to appreciate the long-term cost of attempting to stand pat when it comes to software. If you’re not advancing, you’re falling behind in the software world.
Clear the Way
Once you have a clear objective and a mandate to implement change, the next step is easier. Clear the way!
Consultants generally like to move quickly. So the faster the host company can clear roadblocks the better.
This means having business and technical domain experts available to answer questions promptly. There’s no good reason for your $200/hr consultant to be waiting around for answers on simple business domain questions.
Also, it’s important to give your consultants the freedom to operate. It may feel natural to treat the consultants as part of your host company team and include them in your regular meetings. But I’d contend this is counterproductive.
Surely the consultants should attend the daily development team Stand up, right? Usually wrong. The consultants should and generally will organize their own Stand up based around their clearly defined project objectives.
This avoids the Corporate Stand up madness. That’s a post for another day, but if you’ve worked in corporations of any size you likely know what a Corporate Stand up is and why it’s such a disaster.
In short, let the consultants do their thing with a minimum amount of extraneous obligations. Most consultants I’ve found are high performing and self-motivated. You don’t need to worry much that they’re surfing the web all day like some disillusioned FTEs may do.
Summary
How to get the most out of your consultant sounds so simple. The reality is it can be a big challenge. However, if you prioritize the following three points you’ll be ahead of the game.
Have a clear objective that is also well-defined. When consultant and client are clear about what will be delivered, engagements tend to go very well.
Be willing to implement change. This is a hard one, but can be done with good, strong leadership.
Clear the way. At this point your consultants should be off to the races and it’s management’s job to help them move fast.