The Delicate Art of Pushing Back

Commiserating a week or so ago with an old friend, struggling mightily with some external consulting firm providing technology talent, developing customer management systems for Big Sales Company. There were some critical dependencies on the server side, and the (internal) project team needed some on-site assistance working through the issues. Ad hoc phone support was just not cutting it - but the external project lead was pushing back. It's very difficult to get on-site, dedicated help for these in-demand DB…

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Strategies for Malware in Consulting Engagements

Last in a series on some practical legal mumbo jumbo (disclaimer: IANAL) for your Master Consulting Agreements (MCA). This one was particularly interesting to put in; it's really interesting to see who catches it, but it was an amazing (in retrospect) observation that led us to include the language. The Trigger Event: A virus outbreak. We had been hit before, and the executive group was not fond of losing their email for a day or two, so we implemented fairly…

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Strategies for Risk Sharing in Consulting Engagements

I am late is responding to a comment on this post, first in a series about Consulting Engagements. Earlier this week it was Intellectual Property, with another good comment ... so, why all the harsh language about protecting IP that I probably can't commercialize? Ah - welcome to the world of Risk Sharing. The issue is that most businesses, especially SMBs that are simply not used to paying $200 an hour for labor, typically have a tough time wrapping their…

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Strategies for Intellectual Property in Consulting Engagements

Previously, I wrote about Fee Structures in Consulting Engagements, which is the stuff that the consultants are primarily interested in. If the consultant / firm has any strategic skills, their next concerns will be about Intellectual Property (IP) rights. <aside> Not that IP, this IP </aside> Do you really think that they make it all up from scratch for each new customer? Of course not - like any other developer, they have a body of code (and/or project/process methodology) that…

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