Just writing off the cuff here: Lately, I've been thinking a lot about potential consulting niches in the software industry at large. With many of my clients t

Just writing off the cuff here: Lately, I've been thinking a lot about potential consulting niches in the software industry at large. With many of my clients there seem to be recurring patterns and challenges regarding software development processes and software products: - dealing with complexity - improving code quality - writing reusable code vs. writing disposable code (i.e. code that can be adapted and replaced quickly) - communication and knowledge transfer - having to write huge amounts of boilerplate / 'plumbing' code over and over again Overall, managing complexity, improving communication, doing away with repetitive processes are huge problems. It's not like nobody is addressing them (IDEs, agile processes focussing on communication alleviate those issues to some extent) but these issues probably are still the most prevalent impediments to efficiently developing software that fits the requirements. So, I think there's an opportunity for consulting companies in terms of reducing the complexity of their software and processes. I'm just not sure exactly how to package this as a productised service. Then again, consulting firms like McKinsey have been doing similar work in the general context of business management for decades - with varying degrees of success.