Are You a Consultant or a Developer?

A look at how successful consulting may depend on understanding the difference.

Ever wondered why projects go off the rails? I do. It keeps me up at night. My livelihood depends on making sure that I understand how to make projects successful. Through years of both successes and failures, I've learned there are a variety of reasons for projects to fail. One of those, which is not discussed as often as I believe it should be, stems from the subtle difference between the hiring of a developer rather than a consultant for a customer-facing project role.

A simple way to explain the distinction between a developer and a consultant is that a developer builds the products that a consultant must then use to create a solution. Both roles require an incredible amount of talent, but the environment in which each of them operates is different and yet many of them share a similar high-tech educational background. This can then lead one to believe that hiring a developer as a consultant may work in the long run. While it might be possible, my experience has been that there are a series of tradeoffs that occur with such an endeavor. These tradeoffs can accumulate to the point that your project portfolio is riddled with improperly prepared consultants which results in a high rate of project escalation and ultimately, failure. Below are five potential consequences of hiring developers to perform as consultants on customer-facing projects.