Discussion on:

When IT consultants should outsource work

How much of your business is done by you alone, and how much is outsourced? Any horror stories to share?

When you said the proper time to outsource is "when it provides a better value" you hit the nail almost on the head. The only caveat is you need to be able to afford it. Which, in this economy, is no small feat!

And that leads me to question one restriction you mentioned.

As an entrepreneur, you need to work yourself out of the business. As an entrepreneur you need to be concerned with working on your business (not in your business). Your target must always be to work towards the day when you aren't working in the business at all. That means EVERYTHING is up for grabs -- including the job you are doing currently. After all, how can you be 100% focused on making money when you're 90% focused on keeping your clients happy?

As an owner/operator you make more money by increasing the number of hours you work. As an entrepreneur you make more money per hour by decreasing the number of hours you work (presuming constant sales & cost). Those reduced hours are where you can begin to generate higher profits.

Glen Ford, PMP
http://www.TrainingNOW.ca
http://www.LearningCreators.com/blog/

... that we like the work much more than running the business, so the idea of handing off all the work product to others so we can focus on the business makes us sad.

The article's main points make a lot of sense as long as you're talking about small projects. You are just unable to code all by yourself. Period. Any examples successful "one-man-made" projects? As projects grows it takes more and more business operations and marketing efforts from the owner. And you'd better outsource non-crucial development and concentrate on the core development.
Thanks,
Sasha Baksht, Techbridge.ca

This is a difficult question, for I have just taken on a Server 2008 install for a local company whose IT guru is out of the picture in a corporate job. If he cannot manage an outside business, he should not be doing it. Rule 1. But he remains their trusted source so I undertook this project from hell. Nice people, interesting technologies on-site. My first method was to follow their advice and dump the 2008 server into a 2003 domain and bring it up to speed, but there were issues there. My previous 2008 projects have involved the disengagement of a dead 2003 server, new domain, and station migration using a wonderful little utility by Forensit - called ProfWiz - to effortlessly pull stations out of one domain and into a new one with all rights carried over. Wonderful method. Works great. 5 min per station. Easy?

WHOA - CORPORATE IT GURU went nuts, so I had to scrap hours of work and, yesterday, built it to his standards even though he is not onsite much and now he is claiming credit for work I did anyway.

I am at the point of providing a final invoice and walking.

Let the guru have the credit. Consultants are often "whipping boys" for the Prince on the Pedestal. It's part of the role we play. When you make an employee look good, they call you again. And when they move on to a new company, they'll probably bring you along for the ride too.

But don't forget - (I'm assuming) they paid you to do it the first time, then you got paid more to do-over the way the Prima Donna wanted it.

When you're on salary, being expected to put in hundreds of hours of overtime without additional compensation, that's no fun. But when you're a consultant, if the specification changes, that's an "extra."

Have fun, guru. Make all the changes you want. Cha-ching.....

"illegitimi Non Carborundum Est"

There's no question whether they pay for extra work. If you're on fixed price, you have to renegotiate the change, and argue about whether it was part of the original spec.

i agree. hourly pay is the best.

I have already banked several hours of work that proved to be scrap, and this is not a good situation for billing time. I am giving some back, but have devise a formula for some of it too.

"There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." Raymond H. Eisenhardt Sr.
(Not Ronald Reagan, nor Robert W. Woodruff of Coca Cola)

Instead of using the "Files and Settings Transfer Wizard", which doesn't get everything (Outlook profiles, Firefox settings, etc.). Does your tool copy those?

In Camden NJ I had a decomissioned dead server and a new replacement with 20 old bad computers to pull out of the domain and put into the new one. ProfWiz is a local .exe run and just pulls EVERYTHING out, rights, printers, the lot. Took 5 min per station and also XMerge worked wonders in Outlook transfer as well.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT. WWW.FORENSIT.COM

u can create a batch file to move profile or do it manually.

Security concerns, printers, access control features. My documents, favorites, etc.

I do not want to create a batch file and I prefer not to do it manually.

ProfWiz does it all for me.

bad choice u did. The guy is a jerk for doing that. but if i was you i will go back to the office and i will tear down delete all the configuration. if they asked me to why i did that. i will explain to them point blank.