Consulting Chronicles #7: The Priority Pyramid

The Priority Pyramid - The 8 Tiers of Software Consulting Introduction

The Priority Pyramid is a tool I use to stay on track with new consulting clients. It prioritizes how, who, and what I engage in at any given time. It can be overwhelming when thrust into a challenging situation, a code base in dire straits, and a frustrated team. You need a strong pillar of guidance.

This article goes over what parts make up the Priority Pyramid from a high level. I’ll talk about what milestones make up each section and how you navigate back and forward between the priorities.

When done, you should know how to engage your client’s team and tackle working on a large code base at a frustrated client site with 99 problems.

Consulting Chronicles #6: Refactoring

Refactoring Introduction

Refactoring is the discipline of applying a multitude of small, low-risk techniques to a code base in order fix and improve it. While corroborated by the software community, employing such techniques in a consulting context can be challenging because people are involved, often in a negative situation.

You need 2 weapons to win the refactoring battle. First, you need to understand what refactoring techniques are at your disposal and how to implement them. Below, I’ve listed the core ones I see needed time and time again. Second, you need to have a plan on how you engage the client company and their employees to allow you to do the first. That’s covered in the next article.

Consulting Chronicles #5: Getting In, and Out, of the Industry

Today, I’ll talk about how to get into consulting, what the skills and expectations are, and what can cause you to get out.

What is Consulting?

Consulting in the Flash/Flex world usually consists of 3 tasks that may be related:

Offer your architecture expertise.
Offer your code mechanic expertise.
Augment an existing team.

Consulting Chronicles #4: Qualifying Leads

Rather than make the typical lateral developer move to learning a new language, runtime, or IDE, I’m instead trying to bring in more business. What I want to talk about today are my challenges in doing so regarding qualifying leads.

Introduction

Early in the year, I knew I was done with freelance, and working with other consulting firms. Freelance doesn’t make enough money, and working with other firms prevents you both from doing what you want to do, as well as making more money. I could either build my own firm, which required a ton of branding & marketing work, or just join an existing one. There are pro’s and con’s to each and after weighing the options for about a year, I just joined Web App Solution as a partner for a year to see how it went.

Consulting Chronicles #3: Preventing Fire Drills & Crises by Removing Land-mines and Using Diagnostic Tools

Preface

When brought into existing projects in a consulting role, there will often be the perception the project is “mostly done”, or “90% there”. Opening up the hood, you sigh. You marvel at the wonders of modern programming technology, how they’ve empowered even the shoddiest, hastily thrown together, duct taped to work and work well, fooling many into a sense of functional complacency. You also wonder when, not if, it’ll explode in someone’s face.

Consulting Chronicles #2: Fixing a Pile of Rubbish – Part 3

The following covers the balance between getting things done and playing politics.

Preface

I attempt to expose the harsh realities playing the politics game entails, as well as dodging it. It may come off as disgusting in some parts. I agree. However, if you have strong character, good ethics, and are an honest person, you’ll be fine. Whether you like it or not, in consulting you have to play some politics to ensure you’re actually allowed to code and do your job. Think of it as a necessary evil, or a human game of chess; whatever works for you.

Consulting Chronicles #2: Fixing a Pile of Rubbish – Part 2

In Part 1, I covered how you earn trust from the client, and set the stage for how you start to fix a large pile of rubbish; a seriously broken piece of Flex software. While there are 5 aspects to fixing it using the 5 P’s: Programming, Prowess, Politics, Positivity, and Patience; the Programming one is large, so here is the second part.

Consulting Chronicles #2: Fixing a Pile of Rubbish – Part 1

Introduction

A lot of consulting revolves around fixing other peoples code. Sometimes this is pretty straightforward. Sometimes you perceive it as an unfixable disaster. Other times, not only is it a disaster, but you could be put into a situation where you are perceived as taking advantage of the situation when in fact you’re attempting to fix it.

Disaster recovery in consulting is solved by using the 5 P’s: Programming, Prowess, Politics, Positivity, and Patience.

Even if you aren’t a consultant, the tactics below should help you fix the un-fixable.

Flex Consulting Chronicles #1: You are NOT a Contractor

Preface

The following is a set of articles relaying my experiences in Flex consulting with the hope they will benefit others. While they include general consulting advice, they are specifically geared towards Enterprise Flex software development consulting. I try to compare and contrast with contracting to give context. While it’s mainly focused on Flex, there are the occasional Flash references as well.

Consulting Chronicles #7: The Priority Pyramid

Consulting Chronicles #6: Refactoring

Consulting Chronicles #5: Getting In, and Out, of the Industry

Consulting Chronicles #4: Qualifying Leads

Consulting Chronicles #3: Preventing Fire Drills & Crises by Removing Land-mines and Using Diagnostic Tools

Consulting Chronicles #2: Fixing a Pile of Rubbish – Part 3

Consulting Chronicles #2: Fixing a Pile of Rubbish – Part 2

Consulting Chronicles #2: Fixing a Pile of Rubbish – Part 1

Flex Consulting Chronicles #1: You are NOT a Contractor

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