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Good Consulting

By Adrian Cockcroft, Jason Cox, Elisabeth Hendrickson, Courtney Kissler, John Rzeszotarski, Brian Scott, Caleb Wolfe

Helping Organizations and Consulting Agencies Build Successful Engagements

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Senior leaders and managers will likely need the help of a consultant at some point. However, despite the clear need for consultants, many consulting engagements still fail, ending over budget, overdue, and with underwhelming results. This paper provides practical ways for clients to make the most out of their consulting engagements, including how to approach a consultant, how to set expectations, and how to successfully offboard the consultant, leaving both the client and consultant satisfied. Although this guide is written for clients, consultants can also leverage it to meet client expectations and develop a clear understanding of the client’s needs.

Building on “A Leader’s Guide to Working with Consultants: Moving from Consultant Dependency to Building Internal Capability,” published in the Fall 2021 DevOps Enterprise Journal, this guide focuses specifically on engagements where the consulting company is instrumental in delivering a new capability in the form of a product or service (i.e., delivery engagements).

As you read through this guide, the authors take you on a journey through epic stories of success and failure, leaving you with a clear picture of what good consulting can look like and how you can make your next delivery engagement a success!

  • Publication Date September 27, 2022
  • Pages 20

Features

  • Clear Guidance

    This paper provides clear guidelines on how to ensure your consulting engagement is a success at every step of the process.

  • Real-Life Stories

    This paper takes you on a journey through epic stories of success and failure, leaving you with a clear picture of what good consulting can look like .

  • Expert Authors

    This paper is written by experienced leaders across industries who have worked with successful partnerships with consultants across multiple industries.

  • All Levels

    Change Agents can come from anywhere on the org chart. This paper directly provides guidance on how to lead change no matter your role or title.

About the Resource

Senior leaders and managers will likely need the help of a consultant at some point. However, despite the clear need for consultants, many consulting engagements still fail, ending over budget, overdue, and with underwhelming results. This paper provides practical ways for clients to make the most out of their consulting engagements, including how to approach a consultant, how to set expectations, and how to successfully offboard the consultant, leaving both the client and consultant satisfied. Although this guide is written for clients, consultants can also leverage it to meet client expectations and develop a clear understanding of the client’s needs.

Building on “A Leader’s Guide to Working with Consultants: Moving from Consultant Dependency to Building Internal Capability,” published in the Fall 2021 DevOps Enterprise Journal, this guide focuses specifically on engagements where the consulting company is instrumental in delivering a new capability in the form of a product or service (i.e., delivery engagements).

As you read through this guide, the authors take you on a journey through epic stories of success and failure, leaving you with a clear picture of what good consulting can look like and how you can make your next delivery engagement a success!

Adrian Cockcroft
Jason Cox
Elisabeth Hendrickson
Courtney Kissler
John Rzeszotarski
Brian Scott
Caleb Wolfe
Adrian Cockcroft

Adrian Cockcroft

Technology and strategy advisor

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Jason Cox

Jason Cox

Director, Global SRE @ Disney | Speaker | Co-Author of Investments Unlimited

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Elisabeth Hendrickson

Elisabeth Hendrickson

Experienced technology leader building what I have learned into simulations so others can learn in minutes what it took me years to figure out.

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Courtney Kissler

Courtney Kissler

Courtney Kissler is senior vice president of Customer & Retail Technology for Starbucks. In this role, Courtney is responsible for delivery and performance across all retail platforms, including point of sale (POS) and store networks. She also drives transformational programs such as next-generation technology in Starbucks stores all over the world. Courtney’s engineering teams are responsible for extending customer digital engagement through world-class web and mobile experiences, supported by modern scalable cloud platforms and integrated services to build innovative solutions and enable business capabilities across the global Starbucks enterprise. Courtney returned to Starbucks in 2023 after serving as Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Technology at Zulily, and as the Vice President of Global Technology at Nike, where she was accountable for building a re-usable seamless platform to power Nike Direct to Consumer experiences, core commerce services, user services, consumer data engineering and global retail solutions. Courtney also led Nike’s Global Supply Chain, Fulfillment and Logistics teams, and drove transformation across the supply chain ecosystem. Courtney was vice president of Retail Technology at Starbucks from 2016-2017, where she led global POS and retail store technology experiences. In all her leadership roles, Courtney drove transformation in ways of working, moving to more outcome-based delivery of technology using modern practices, including DevOps. She grew up in Spokane, Washington and moved to Seattle in 1997 after graduating from Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington with a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems and a minor in computer science.

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John Rzeszotarski

John Rzeszotarski

John Rzeszotarski assists organizations with strategic planning and leadership in the solution and infrastructure focus areas; moreover, John provides thought leadership to large enterprises that need to focus on reliability, scalability, regulatory, and other business considerations. His expertise spans many verticals with a focus on digital, payments, security, development, and his primary passion is solving business and IT problems thru technology, process, and culture transformations.

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Brian Scott

Brian Scott

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Caleb Wolfe

Caleb Wolfe

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