Can someone explain to me how and why consulting works? If a man had no real skills except giving advice left and right, he would be considered a loser. Now make it a company, and corporations and governments queue up for their advice. Wouldn't your own employees be in a better position to give you advice than people who know nothing of your business and who's only skills are googling and making presentations?
A couple of uses of consultants that I've seen at first hand: - They helped our company to negotiate the minefield of government R&D tax credits, by interviewing all the developers and assessing how much was R&D compared to the guidelines (which are complicated). I think this was a good use of consultants: You get someone with specialized knowledge, and unless you're an enormous company, you couldn't afford to have s…
1. Since tax prep is siloed away from development, you don’t know what you don’t know about your company’s tax and regulatory posture. You as a product owner don’t know how it compares with the industry. You don’t know the space of ways it can change.
2. But then, when they find that your development floor looks like everyone else, it’s less than profound. This analysis is most valuable to the outliers; maybe a company that’s merged and bought smaller ones and as a result needs to be told that they’re out of shape.