Consulting Basics

It's important that every engineer joining Aiimi knows the basics of consulting from the outset.

Project experience and your colleagues will be your best teachers but the headline is that our customers are paying a non-trivial amount for your expertise and opinions -- never forget this simple fact.

Your job

Day-to-day

Your job, simply, is to help the customer to solve their problems. This can include writing code and building cloud infrastructure but it can equally mean gathering requirements from users/stakeholders or writing documentation/recommendations at the end of a project.

Importantly, this will often include defining the problem in the first place. Therefore you need to ask questions (think why x5).

We all have our own expertises, interests and preferred activities but our job, at the end of the day, is to fulfill a need for a client and so we must be prepared to wear multiple hats.

How is consulting different?

Often as a developer, you are an employee of a company: your boss asks you to complete a series of tasks and you do them - your responsibility is to fulfill whatever your boss needs you to.

As a consultant, your responsibility to work with your Aiimi colleagues in close collaboration with a client to jointly deliver a project. This is not the same as working for the client - the client is not your boss!

Our aim is always to deliver a project that meets a clients needs, whilst also delivering on time and to-budget. This often means saying no or asking a client to prioritise the features that they want so work with your delivery manager to manage them dynamic

Project delivery

All being well, the Pre/Sales team will have agreed a well-defined Statement Of Work (SOW) with the client - this is a legal document detailing what Aiimi are responsible for delivering. The Aiimi delivery team for each project needs to achieve everything stated in this SOW, on time and on budget. This means:

• Agreeing what that SOW actually means in practice, building out the requirements for a project, and deciding the "definition of done" is often the first (and arguably most important) task in the project
• Managing the client's stakeholders' expectations throughout the project, making sure they are happy with what we're actually delivering, the progress we've made, and the tasks we're prioritising

This is achieved in Aiimi using the Scrum/Agile framework which can be delved into further elsewhere in this handbook.

At Aiimi, we succeed as a team and fail as a team - there are very few instances where there is just one person responsible for a mistake. It is up to all of us to challenge and support each other to ensure the success of a project.

Empathy, empathy, empathy

Putting yourself in the clients' shoes can help you to understand their motives, aims, pressures, etc. Attempt to truly understand their position.

How you present yourself

How you present yourself is critical. Aiimi employees are known by our clients as:

Expert - If you've joined Aiimi, then you are competent and effective so be confident and honest about your skills. Be intentional and present yourself as an authority: You don't have to know everything or claim to know everything, but you do need to develop the client's confidence in you/Aiimi.

Professional - This is always a tricky thing to quantify but the basics are being punctual, responding to communications with the same level of formality that they were sent with, and wearing what I'd describe as smart-casual on client site and casual in the office (do ask someone if you're unsure!).

Personable - Clients enjoy working with Aiimi, not just because of the quality of our work, but also because we're lovely people and form positive relationships. As you get deeper into a project, don't be afraid to get to know your colleagues on the client side better.

Aiimi's style isn't beige-corporate, but it is professional. Be inclusive and treat everyone with respect (which includes being willing them challenge them in order to ultimately help them!).

Communication

Communication is key. Articulate yourself clearly. Understand who you are talking to and their level of technical proficiency and tailor your words to suit the audience.

Think before every meeting/presentation/interaction:

• What is the purpose of this meeting?
• What do I want to get out of this?
• What do the other people on the call want to get out of this?
• How to I ensure all three of these elements are fulfilled.

Technical expertise

You need technical expertise. Does this mean you have to know the answer to every question? Absolutely not. Your aims should be to:

1. Do the best you can with the information you have - you are not expected to be the fount of all knowledge but apply what you know and work/find out the rest.
2. Do your best to network & research to find the answers (both internally and externally). There are plenty of experienced and friendly people you who will offer their support - ask them!
3. Get practiced asking the client for more information - we're working together to complete this project and if what they need isn't clear, it's better to ask them than build something undesirable.
4. Continuously learn - One reason why a company hires consultants is because they doesn't have their own in-house expertise or their experts are too stretched, so they pay extra for people who have an already established skillset. So, use your own initiative (and training days!) to stay at the sharp-end of what's possible in this fast-moving industry.

What makes Aiimi, Aiimi?

Aiimi's values are:

• Brave
• Expert
• Caring
• Integrity

Finally,

A personal piece of advice: Chat to people in the office (if you can make it to MK). Aiimi is full of kind, welcoming, and delightful people that would love to get to know you and will make your experience at Aiimi so rewarding. ...