Death of the Consultants...

Consultancy.... R.I.P.? ZapThink seems to think so, at least, according to News.com. Well, I am construing it just a bit. What they actually said is that, with the advent of Web Services, consultants have to focus less on getting systems to communicate, and more on, God forbid (or Allah as the case may be) Business Process Rearchitecture. This is long overdue in my opinion.

Perfect example: When I worked for TechUSA, a contractor for Qworst (That's Qwest for the non-initiated) in their DSL Repair Group, they did not have a single, unified process for troubleshooting DSL problems. NOT ONE. It was an incredibly nice office, nice people, great technology, best IT department I've seen... but they could not do their job effectively (troubleshoot DSL), and therefore neither could I. Why? Lack of vision, insight, but mainly an unwillingness to dedicate the time necessary to understand the process inside and out, and find the best way to do it. It really bugs me when a company lacks vision and cannot think outside the box.

I saw this great article on the need for companies to embrace the "unconventional" employess that don't fit the stuffed shirt, white collar, 9-5 mold. Unfortunately I can't find the link, so if you read this and know what I'm talking about, a link would be great. Anyways, those guys are the ones that are going to fuel that kind of change. It's really too bad tho, because I don't see it happening on any grand scale anytime soon. Here's what I do see happening tho, and I hope that I'm wrong, but fear that I'm not:

Management typically has no idea about technology, so long as it works. Up to this point, typically it's been a royal PITA to get technology to work (and also very expensive). What we're beginning to see is a trend towards desktops being easier to set-up/maintain. So when Management starts to see that everything just works, they'll go "WOO HOO! Cost-cutting time!" and start to pare back their IT department. Chances are, those unconventional employees will be the first ones to go. At that point, no one will care about cleaning up the business process, because there isn't enough staff to tackle the task, and it's "good enough right now".

Only companies like Microsoft will be able to change that mentality. Why? Because they hire the best and the brightest to do nothing but think outside the box. Then other companies will see that it's successful and follow suit. Too bad that this approach is the exception and not the rule. Maybe the economy wouldn't be so bad now if it was the rule.