Life of a Business Principal in Consulting

Pretty stupid question, right? Actually No. This is the new debate that is going on. For more details read here: Wired article on John Deere Do the manufacturer own the product because the product has some software that is owned by John Deere or is it owned by customers. The concept of ownership has been pretty clear for the last century or so, barely going through a debate despite the rise and fall of communism.  

We talk about a lot of agile practices that enterprise needs to adapt. Continuous deployment is an engineering practices in the agile practices arsenal. Till recently, I was a vocal supporter of this practice for enterprise as well. Yet, a few thoughts and happenings have made me rethink blindly supporting this for the enterprise. I still support it but do it with a lot more rational approach. This is a sign of me understanding how enterprise read and understand agile.

What started as a simple thought has now taken the shape of an idea in my mind now. Instead of just trying to keep it hidden, I want to understand what do people think of this idea and would it make sense. If it does make sense, what are the factors that are good in this idea? Are there any ideas that can be used to extend this concept further. More details on the concept here: Product Barter Marketplace from Prashanth Madhavan Narasimhan

The other day I was working on a strategy document for one of my consulting assignments. What was strange was that I had access to all information but I was not sure how to present it in a clear way that would mean action from the stake holders. As consultants, the reason we present the strategy and tactical plans is because we hope the stake holders can gain value. However, we always have impediments in terms of selecting the right information to present, providing the right context and suggesting the right set of next level activities. Frameworks for Decision Making Let me start with a simple decision framework that I used to get the strategy document presented.