PM Consultant: Is this Gig for You?

Jiju ‘Jay’ Nair is a Senior Manager with Fannie Mae driving Cloud Transformation and adoption. He is an avid advocate for using innovative project and process management principles for building reliable and sustainable products.

  Career Development  

If you have not been a project manager on a contingent worker status, you are missing a great deal of experience in your PM career. As we all know, a PM seldom gets full authority on all aspects of a project--even though he or she will be fully responsible for the outcome of the project. I recall one of the CEOs of a financial company declaring during a town hall meeting that the “proverbial buck” stops with him. A project manager should also feel exactly the same way when dealing with day-to-day, project-related issues. In a consultant PM’s case, this lack of total control on project elements intensifies as he or she is usually far removed from office politics in an organization. However, this contingent status presents a unique opportunity to those individuals who want to take their consulting prowess to the next level.

The contingent worker or staff augmentation business is here to stay. It has grown from a $60 billion to an almost $200 billion industry in 2010. Industry trends show that a large number of American companies prefer the 40 percent contract worker to the 60 percent full-time employee in the workforce mix. It’s also important to note that out of the 40 percent contractor pool, some are offshore or outsourced staff. All these facts are good news to consultant PMs as they present increased job opportunities in a volatile economy for …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.