What is a technical consultant?

Responsibilities & expectations of a technical consultant

Motivation

I am sure many people in the tech industry have been asked or asking themselves a similar question. In this article I am exploring my answer to what this term stands for.
Many call themselves technical because they work closely with software engineers or tech teams — but that answer does not satisfy me as it’s not precise enough.
Consultants in the technology industry, whom I regard as external project managers, should always have basic project management skills like budget estimation, timeline management and agile practices with iterative development cycles. Most of which have worked with engineers closely and know what is important in Scrum.

However I strongly believe in order to be called a technical consultant, one needs to have another layer of experience on top of all the above:

A technical consultant has to have been a developer.

What makes them technical?

Many industries are increasingly interested in technical consultants.
Even clients that do not need a consultant with a technical background believe that a developer background is a great asset. Companies know that a developer with a certain level of experience knows how to plan and execute a software project — which in the end is like any other project. It requires planning, implementation, optimization and continious monitoring.

Now many say — why is there a need to code if a consultant is not expected to code but rather to manage and support technical teams?
The answer is simple: As a technical consultant you are required to help with technical decisions. If you don’t have hands-on experience with a modern technology stack you will have a hard time finding the right one.
Most importantly — why should a client trust you with your decisions if you don’t bring the expertise first-hand to the table?

Working with technical teams

Once you managed to convince the client — you have to convince the most important people: The development team.
A tech team will quickly doubt your competence if you do not know how the things work under the hood and start suggesting unrealistic timelines and expectations.
Therefore it is absolutely crucial for any technical consultant to have experience with best practices and modern tech stacks to gain respect from the developer team. You must be able to challenge and support them and speak to them as an engineer.
Developers don’t care how well versed a consultant is in project management skills — it is important that a consultant understands the pain and problems of the development cycle first-hand. Otherwise they will see you just as any project management instance that needs some excel sheet reporting.

I myself encounter this experience in every project. As a technical consultant one needs empathy for the developer team. You need to show that you understand their pain points and that you speak the same tongue.
Rather than saying “When can we expect this to be done?” — You should have a sincere interest in saying “Explain the problem to me, maybe we can find a solution together.”.

I am not saying that you need to be a fulltime-developer yourself and coding in your projects — but you should definetely be a technology enthusiast and care for the technical details of a project. This way your team will always come to you to discuss road blocks and other issues. So you can support them and provide valuable feedback that makes your project outcome successful.

The technical enabler

Technical consultants are not just information spreaders — rather they are knowledge sources. Although they come with the skills to plan and communicate, they flourish in helping clients and teams find the rights answers to complex technological problems.
Instead of just being another role that organizes and collaborates you have the ability to find technical solutions based on experience that works.
Because a technical consultant knows the business aspects he can find technical solutions whilst keeping business interest first.

The updated consultant

In today’s world technology changes in a lightning speed. Therefore a technical consultant needs to gain new experience and continue to learn new technologies. That is how they stay informed and up to date.
A technical consultant is always doing something on the side — learning a new language, technology or deepening a known field. Otherwise, it’s difficult to catch up.

It’s also important to have a network of other technical consultants for support and knowledge sharing. That’s why it is great for companies to hire entire consulting firms focused on technology — thus gaining a huge network of experts.

Summary

In this article I tried to showcase my answer to what the term technical stands for and what a technical consultants needs to bring to the table.
Finally I believe a technical consultant needs to have hands-on developer experience and thus be able to solve complex technical problems.