Flawless consulting
For fifteen years, internal and external consultants have relied on Peter Block's landmark bestseller, Flawless Consulting, to learn how to deal effectively with clients, peers, and others. Using illustrative examples, case studies, and exercises, the author -- one of the most important in his field -- offers you his legendary warmth and insight. This much-awaited edition is for you, even if you don't think of yourself as a "consultant." - Jacket flap.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2013–2020years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Realise that you will be a translator who is paid to understand the technical enough and the business enough that the project can have a conversation.
As far as tools and methodologies - you have to use what your customers use to communicate. It may just be emails as some of the other commenters have said - have a meeting, write up the notes, email the notes.
Once you are past design stage and into user acceptance test and go live you will need an issue tracking tool. Maybe your customer’s IT department has a help desk system that you can integrate with. Be very cautious of using unsecured SAAS products - only document security issues about your implementation on Google sheets if you are 100% confident of who can see it. I am never that confident and want to work somewhere the customer’s IT security is happy with.
I would recommend the book Flawless Consulting by Peter Block. It’s about management consulting at a more senior level than implementation consulting but the points about agreeing with the customer what they need to provide to you for you to do your job are very valuable.
You need to explain to your customer the consequences of choices. Sales are often happy to say “yes we can build that”. But really the standard configuration takes 1 month to implement, 30 custom features take much longer.
Disclaimer I moved from functional into implementation (accountant into implementing finance systems) which is different from technical into implementation.
- I can highly recommend Flawless Consulting by Peter Block. He covers all these issues and many others. Self awareness is critical to success. If you are inexperienced you need to be able to recognize/acknowledge your inexperience. Then read everything available on the subject and interview every expert you can identify. Clint Eastwood said it best, "A man's got to know his limitations". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VrFV5r8cs0
- > Because of our desire to get a project going, most of us have a tendency to overlook and downplay early resistance and skepticism. We delude ourselves into thinking that once clients get into the project, they will be hooked by it and learn to trust us. This can lead to our bending over more than we wish in the beginning, hoping that we will be able to stand up straight later on. This usually doesn't work. When we bend over in the beginning, the client sees us as someone who works in a bent-over position. When we avoid issues in the beginning, the client sees us as someone who avoids issues. It is difficult to change these images and expectations of us - particularly if the client wishes us to bend over and avoid issues.
> Flawless Consulting, A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used by Peter Block (2011)
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