Preface
When brought into existing projects in a consulting role, there will often be the perception the project is “mostly done”, or “90% there”. Â Opening up the hood, you sigh. Â 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. Â You also wonder when, not if, it’ll explode in someone’s face.
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. Â It may come off as disgusting in some parts. Â I agree. Â However, if you have strong character, good ethics, and are an honest person, you’ll be fine. Â 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. Â Think of it as a necessary evil, or a human game of chess; whatever works for you.
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. Â 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.
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.