Lessons from Consulting

As a consultant you get the chance to work on lots of unique projects from the ground up and also to come in and fix up existing projects.  With an eye towards managing a budget, estimating your time, and  keeping active communication there are a lot of valuable lessons to learn.

On the other hand things are very different when you have only one client (the company you work for).  As an employee developing software that is owned by the company there are fewer external constraints, timelines are often times more flexible, and how you budget your time is less onerous.

Making a good estimate on a software project is extremely difficult.  When you make an estimate and are held accountable to deliver within that estimate then there is pressure to be as thorough as possible.  Knowing how things are progressing within that estimate requires accurate time tracking.  Learning from it, to get better at your estimates, requires a feedback loop where you can compare the estimated time to the actual time and figure out why they don’t always match up.

Keeping yourself to account on initial estimates helps develop a better sense of the scope of the projects you undertake.  This benefit carries over to personal projects as well.

When working on 10’s of different projects over the course of a year organization is key.  It’s not limited to just your files.   Organizing your communcation, reading material, and schedule is super critical when juggling a lot of projects. Being able to jump into 2 year old code to patch a security vulnerability quickly requires a level of organization and consistency that takes time to develop.

Everyone at some point should at least try to be a consultant. Running your work like a business gives a unique perspective on how others perceive you. It’s a game changer.