clash of the consultants or how to deal with incompetence

those of you who are road warriors can attest to the difficulties when it comes to dealing with other consultants and/or contractors that the client employs.

my current client has "issued" us a project manager, who i am convinced, has never successfully managed a project in his career.

the client PM is a client employee who had spent the last 9 years as a "contractor" (his words). he spent the beginning of the engagement trying to convince me of his technical chops, but came across as fairly whingey. apparently his only experience was in training and coding for vignette. our engagement is for an identity management solution. needless to say, the client PM is in over his head.

so i've been tracking and dealing with the client PM's inability to keep track of tasks and requirements that the client team is responsible for. my team is on track. if you're a consultant with a bit of experience, you can probably figure out where this is going.

the client team is behind. so the client PM did what any good "contractor" would do. he tried to throw us under the bus.

luckily for me, the client PM is stupid as well as incompetent. he sent an email to my area partner and CC'd his bosses in complaining about minor issues that should've been handled by the client. his complaint is that we did not "hold there hand" enough.

of course he thought that since he's the client that my area partner would come down on my team and he'd have the upper hand. this was not how it happened. my area partner forwarded me the email, i was able to get in touch with the client sponsors and avoid a blame game train wreck.

so what have i learned and what should all consultants (read NOT contractors) do?

1. keep email communications clear. one of the big things that i was able to do was present email evidence contrary to what the client PM was accusing the team of.

2. never trust the client's PM. i've never had a good experience with client PMs. if they were that good, they'd be working for a consulting organization for more money. but they aren't, so they work in industry.

3. contractors are not the same as consultants. despite what many so-called consulting company's claim, they are not into consulting. they do not try to add value for the client. they are about resource augmentation. they are effectively the IT equivalent of the kelly girl and they are only interested in the billable hour. so if you know you're dealing with a "contractor" then it is best to remember to keep a diary of every time you question the "contractors" decision or note his failure to accomplish a task. keep it with you in case you have to "call out" the contractor and take him to task for his incompetence.

the above 3 items may help when it comes to dealing with clients. i'll post later on some more tips when dealing with an incompetent client who wants to play blame the consultant.