The difference between the consultant’s and internal organization’s view on projects

The other day someone asked me about the difference between the consultant’s and internal organization’s view on projects. The answer is easy. Consultants are usually involved only in the discovery and design phases. Sometimes they provide a light touch support to implementation as well. On the other hand, people working for the organization will always be responsible for project implementation and transfer of the results to business-as-usual. 

In other words, while consultants do their magic with showing the direction, the true intricacies for each project start with implementation: analyzing the resources and efforts required, finding available slots for each team to support, allocating the funds in the budget, planning the timeline, connecting the dots between all the project elements, and only then starting the project execution.

Therefore, the project lifecycle from the organization’s perspective is always much longer than from the consultant’s perspective. Also, the efforts and complexities are always higher on the organization’s side.

Of course, this does not diminish the work made by consultants. Without them showing the direction, organizations would be lost sometimes.