Seriously Bad Consulting

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

A friend of mine, who’s workplace shall remain nameless, finds themselves dealing with quite the mess because of their IT consultant. This is a small business, I think somewhere around 20 people, with no internal tech staff. They had outsourced the tech support to a guy, who had been doing it for over a year, and then suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. Not only did he just up and quit responding to their calls, after they went out and found a new company to do their tech support stuff, this guy came in and upon doing some network inventory, found that the couple of machines the old guy had rebuilt, had software on them that the company never purchased and have no license to use.

So, now the new guy has to go in and clean this mess up, tracking down the licenses they do have, and get it all straightened out. I don’t envy him. (Although I bet he’s got some serious billing time coming in!)

Let’s remember the golden rule, shall we, don’t leave your client more of a mess than when you started, ok? You know it’s easier when things are documented, up to date, and running smoothly when you start working with a new client, try to be nice to the guy following you in the gig.

Technorati Tags: Consulting, SoftwareLicensing

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One Comment

  1. I have been in this situation more times that I like to think about. I always try to go by the Hippocratic Oath, “First, do no harm!”

    Others seem to miss this fact.

    Douglas

    Reply

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