Quote of the Day: The Second Law of Consulting

 

One of my favorite technical authors is Gerald Weinberg. He wrote in the ’70s through ’90s about systems analysis and software management and design. Among the books is a three-volume series on Quality Software Management.  I have most of his books and have given or loaned them out to co-workers. One of the more readable books is The Secrets of Consulting written in 1985. Unfortunately, I seem to have loaned it out and not gotten it back. Google to the rescue. My favorite quote is:

The Second Law of Consulting: “No matter how it looks at first, it is always a people problem.”

This hits home, since in my various consulting stints, I have seen this over and over again. Perhaps the best example was a project to develop a hydraulically powered exercise machine (a whole ‘nother story). I was brought in after the system was partially developed since I understood the rather obscure programming language it used (Forth). When I looked at the system architecture, it was strangely divided into three subsystems along with a complicated communications system between them. The division made no sense from a functional standpoint and added to both cost and complexity. After poking around for a while, I found out that the three engineers couldn’t stand each other.

Other quotes

  • Asking for efficiency and adaptability in the same program is like asking for a beautiful and modest wife.  Although beauty and modesty have been known to occur in the same woman, we’ll probably have to settle for one or the other. At least that’s better than nothing.”
  • “If the software doesn’t have to work, you can always meet any other requirement.” (This fits with another software saying, “Schedule, cost, or quality – pick any two.”)
  • “If builders built houses the way programmers built programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.”
  • “Things are the way they are because they got that way.”
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  1. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    WillowSpring: The Second Law of Consulting: “No matter how it looks at first, it is always a people problem”

    That really should be the first law, not only of consulting, but also management and communication and organizational growth and…

    • #1
  2. WillowSpring Member
    WillowSpring
    @WillowSpring

    I probably should have given the three laws of consulting for completeness, but the first and third are more specific to consulting (and I have some disagreement with the third)

    Here they are:

    1. There is always a problem.  Never promise more than a ten percent improvement.
    2. Its always a people problem
    3. They’re paying you by the hour, not by the solution.
    • #2
  3. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    This is part of the Quote of the Day Series. If you would like to sign up to participate and share your favorite quote, our July sign-up sheet is here.

    Thank you, WillowSpring.

    • #3
  4. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    WillowSpring (View Comment): I have some disagreement with the third

    I can see why. It depends on how one structures one’s billing.

    • #4
  5. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    WillowSpring: “If the software doesn’t have to work, you can always meet any other requirement.” (This fits with another software saying “Schedule, cost or quality – pick any two”)

    Used to be “good, fast or cheap”.

    • #5
  6. WillowSpring Member
    WillowSpring
    @WillowSpring

    @arahant – The subheading for #3 mellows it out a little: “You will never accomplish anything if you care who gets credit”

     

    • #6
  7. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    WillowSpring: “Asking for efficiency and adaptability in the same program is like asking for a beautiful and modest wife. Although beauty and modesty have been known to occur in the same woman, we’ll probably have to settle for one or the other. At least that’s better than nothing”

    This is doable, it just has to be the focus of the effort from start to finish, even outweighing the actual goal of the software.  It’s rarely worth doing, really only those situations where there will be rapid, constant change.

    • #7
  8. WillowSpring Member
    WillowSpring
    @WillowSpring

    @judgemental – you are right.  I quoted it from memory, but should have looked it up

    • #8
  9. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    WillowSpring: “If the software doesn’t have to work, you can always meet any other requirement.” (This fits with another software saying “Schedule, cost or quality – pick any two”)

    Used to be “good, fast or cheap”.

    Synomyms

    • #9
  10. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    I never thought engineers or programmers could be so humorous, or so off base, as in the exercise machine. My favorites are the last two quotes. I’ve seen some of those houses in these parts – if the property owners only knew…   I think the last quote the Democrats made up in an effort to further confuse…

    • #10
  11. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    WillowSpring: “If the software doesn’t have to work, you can always meet any other requirement.” (This fits with another software saying “Schedule, cost or quality – pick any two”)

    Used to be “good, fast or cheap”.

    Ha. I think someone once said to the army, “Never forget your equipment was made by the lowest bidder.”

    • #11
  12. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    WillowSpring (View Comment):
    @judgemental – you are right. I quoted it from memory, but should have looked it up

    I remember that version from years before it was a software thing.  I was prepared to believe it had been updated by nerds.

    • #12
  13. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    WillowSpring: This hits home, since in my various consulting stints, I have seen this over and over again. Perhaps the best example was a project to develop a hydraulically powered exercise machine (a whole ‘nother story). I was brought in after the system was partially developed since I understood the rather obscure programming language it used (Forth). When I looked at the system architecture, it was strangely divided into three subsystems along with a complicated communications system between them. The division made no sense from a functional standpoint and added to both cost and complexity. After poking around for a while, I found out that the three engineers couldn’t stand each other.

    I was brought in to clean up a system where the two principle engineers were divorcing each other while they were implementing the system.

    • #13
  14. Muleskinner Member
    Muleskinner
    @Muleskinner

    Skinner’s Iron Law of Government Consulting: No department or agency report will be believed unless the agency pays a consultant at least $250,000 to say the same thing.

    • #14
  15. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    Muleskinner (View Comment):
    Skinner’s Iron Law of Government Consulting: No department of agency report will be believed unless the agency pays a consultant at least $250,000 to say the same thing.

    True for large corporations too.

    • #15
  16. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    Clavius (View Comment):

    Muleskinner (View Comment):
    Skinner’s Iron Law of Government Consulting: No department of agency report will be believed unless the agency pays a consultant at least $250,000 to say the same thing.

    True for large corporations too.

    I might add that it is often the consultants role to be around to take the blame when things go wrong, regardless of who is really to blame.

    • #16
  17. Muleskinner Member
    Muleskinner
    @Muleskinner

    Clavius (View Comment):

    Clavius (View Comment):

    Muleskinner (View Comment):
    Skinner’s Iron Law of Government Consulting: No department of agency report will be believed unless the agency pays a consultant at least $250,000 to say the same thing.

    True for large corporations too.

    I might add that it is often the consultants role to be around to take the blame when things go wrong, regardless of who is really to blame.

    I haven’t met too many consultants that I haven’t liked at some level, they always do a better job of presentation. It’s just that there isn’t enough larceny in my heart to be one.

    True (mostly) story:

    Consultant: To show how good our model is, give us one or two thousand of your records, chosen at random, and we’ll return 2-3% cases of fraud.

    My boss: Sounds good.

    Me to IT staff: Give me 1,500 random records, and mix in 500 known frauds.

    Me to Consultant: Here you go.

    Consultant: Here are the results, we found 44 suspected cases of fraud.

    Me: You missed all 500 of the known frauds in the sample. If you chose at random, you should have found at least some of the known frauds. If your model was really good, it should have found a lot of them.

    Consultant: Known fraud? That’s not what we asked for.

    Me: Not only did you miss all of the known fraud, you haven’t proved that any of the 44 you chose from the random sample of 1,500 were fraudulent.

    Pointy-Haired Boss: Hire them, you rigged the test.

    • #17
  18. Vectorman Inactive
    Vectorman
    @Vectorman

    WillowSpring (View Comment):
    I probably should have given the three laws of consulting for completeness, but the first and third are more specific to consulting (and I have some disagreement with the third)

    Here they are:

    1. There is always a problem. Never promise more than a ten percent improvement.
    2. Its always a people problem
    3. They’re paying you by the hour, not by the solution.

    Being a consultant/contract engineer for about 20% of my career, I agree with your comment about the third. I was more efficient as a contractor than as a full-timer.

    At one job, a new software programmer had worked over one year and was not able to consistently control a radio system. After looking at his software, I noticed that he had little documentation within his program. After finding the most basic subroutine, I set up a software “shell” to test just that part of the program and we got that working. He wanted to immediately install that code back into his messy code without documentation or a stored “baseline.” As it was just before Christmas, I asked to work over Christmas break, documenting his previous code, cleaning it up, and had the basics working within 2 weeks. This proves law #2, above. And I was asked to continue as a full timer, which I accepted.

    In another job, the company planned for 3 months to integrate a radio into an airborne software system, which wasn’t a bad guess. I had the tough part done within a week, and was done within a month. They gave me more work to do that was actually fun, and offered me a full time job, but I didn’t want to move to their location.

    So unlike many contractors, I ignored law #3, and worked as hard or harder than a full time position, and it made all the difference. As for law #1, that seems relatively obvious.

    • #18
  19. Doctor Robert Member
    Doctor Robert
    @DoctorRobert

    My wife is both beautiful and modest.  And I didn’t have to ask her to be that way.

    • #19
  20. Pugshot Inactive
    Pugshot
    @Pugshot

    This stuff is gold! I bet just about everyone that reads it ends up nodding their heads knowingly!

    • #20
  21. drlorentz Member
    drlorentz
    @drlorentz

    Consulting: If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.

    • #21
  22. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Speaking of contractors. I worked for a general contractor once. It was in part of California where logging was winding down and skiing, tourism and vacation home developments were winding up. One of the upscale developments had a serious case of architectural oneupmanship going. One such customer came (in lederhosen, some Sierra Club types wore lederhosen in the mountains at the time) to my (Okie) boss with a set of plans. Bill looked at the plans. He didn’t want to build the house.

    He told Lederhosen Man that he wouldn’t touch it for less than $110,000 (it was a long time ago; houses then selling for under $50,000 at the time are now going for over a million in the Bay Area.) We (Chuck the carpenter and me the college kid laborer) heard LM say “My architect says it can be built for $90K.” Bill told him “Then tell your architect to build it.”

    Bill later told us that the house was supposed to be an eagle, there was this room with a view out of two windows like eyes, and, he said, the front door was the eagles [expletive.] He didn’t swear or use coarse language much, so you could tell he really didn’t want to build it.

     

    • #22
  23. Snirtler Inactive
    Snirtler
    @Snirtler

    Muleskinner (View Comment):
    I haven’t met too many consultants that I haven’t liked at some level, they always do a better job of presentation. It’s just that there isn’t enough larceny in my heart to be one.

    True (mostly) story:

    Consultant: To show how good our model is, give us one or two thousand of your records, chosen at random, and we’ll return 2-3% cases of fraud.

    My boss: Sounds good.

    Me to IT staff: Give me 1,500 random records, and mix in 500 known frauds.

    Me to Consultant: Here you go.

    Consultant: Here are the results, we found 44 suspected cases of fraud.

    Me: You missed all 500 of the known frauds in the sample. If you chose at random, you should have found at least some of the known frauds. If your model was really good, it should have found a lot of them.

    Consultant: Known fraud? That’s not what we asked for.

    Me: Not only did you miss all of the known fraud, you haven’t proved that any of the 44 you chose from the random sample of 1,500 were fraudulent.

    Pointy-Haired Boss: Hire them, you rigged the test.

    Nuts.

    • #23
  24. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Muleskinner (View Comment):

    Me: Not only did you miss all of the known fraud, you haven’t proved that any of the 44 you chose from the random sample of 1,500 were fraudulent.

    Pointy-Haired Boss: Hire them, you rigged the test.

    So, PHB is now working for the government?

    • #24
  25. Muleskinner Member
    Muleskinner
    @Muleskinner

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):

    Muleskinner (View Comment):

    Me: Not only did you miss all of the known fraud, you haven’t proved that any of the 44 you chose from the random sample of 1,500 were fraudulent.

    Pointy-Haired Boss: Hire them, you rigged the test.

    So, PHB is now working for the government?

    There’s one in every crowd. Can’t escape them.

    • #25
  26. Rightfromthestart Coolidge
    Rightfromthestart
    @Rightfromthestart

    Has there ever been a consultant ( or a new manager) who came to a place and said, ‘ This is working fine, I wouldn’t change a thing’

    The whole ‘consultant’ enterprise is based on reverse incentives, if you finish the job properly and in timely fashion you stop being paid, if you drag it out forever it’s a goldmine.

    I was stuck in a place that became infested with consultants, so bad that the consultants were managing other employees and consultants.

    All the employees were straight salary, all the consultants were getting overtime and at ridiculous rates, guess who never wanted to go home and wanted to work every weekend? Guess who never wanted to finish the job? It was a horror .

     

    • #26
  27. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Rightfromthestart (View Comment):
    Has there ever been a consultant ( or a new manager) who came to a place and said, ‘ This is working fine, I wouldn’t change a thing’

    The whole ‘consultant’ enterprise is based on reverse incentives, if you finish the job properly and in timely fashion you stop being paid, if you drag it out forever it’s a goldmine.

    I was stuck in a place that became infested with consultants, so bad that the consultants were managing other employees and consultants.

    All the employees were straight salary, all the consultants were getting overtime and at ridiculous rates, guess who never wanted to go home and wanted to work every weekend? Guess who never wanted to finish the job? It was a horror .

    Contract negotiations and contract management, two skills for dealing with consultants.

    • #27
  28. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    Arahant (View Comment):
    Contract negotiations and contract management, two skills for dealing with consultants.

    Exactly.  The consultant must always understand who is paying the bills.

    But there is a problem when the person paying the bills is two or more levels above the work and not really in touch with it.  They have a close relationship with the “partner” of the consulting firm who has the ear of the senior manager.  That is how you end up with consultants running things.

    Managers have to trust their people or replace them with people they do trust.  Hiring consultants is a poor substitute, even if it seems easier to begin with.

    • #28
  29. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Clavius (View Comment):
    Hiring consultants is a poor substitute, even if it seems easier to begin with.

    Indeed. Consultants have their place, but things need to be tightly managed.

    • #29
  30. barbara lydick Inactive
    barbara lydick
    @barbaralydick

    “If builders built houses the way programmers built programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.”

    The first thing to come to mind upon reading this was the way the climate models were constructed…

    • #30
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