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I worked at a smaller 130 or so person consultancy. I have a masters in CS, so my resume was always included in the resume pack sent to people. It was listed as

I worked at a smaller 130 or so person consultancy. I have a masters in CS, so my resume was always included in the resume pack sent to people. It was listed as "representative". A woman with a PHD (Physics) and a guy with a PHD in Systems Science Math (ORR) were the other usual suspects. This was in around 2005. Benefit for me was that sales was always updating my resume every time they went out to sell so it was in great shape and I did no work on it. But who worked on the contract was just based on who was free at the time based on who was needed on other contracts. It was very likely I was tied up on another contract as a lead most of the time. Acutally one anti-pattern I pushed against was that we took the person on the bench and had them write the proposals... I pointed out this both landed us with bad implementations but also was likely less efficient than having the leads do the writing. Anyway, this is very common, you can't hire people to fill seats until you have a contract in hand or you're taking someone else's risk. It's also likely that less effective employees are more often free to go sit on a new project. At the start of the project those extra folks are super numerary anyway while the leads design with the customer. Same at the end of the project where you're just cleaning up core deliverables.

NikolaNovak 4y ago
Right. I've been on both sides of this (person proposed for contract I did not end up on, as well as working with teams different than proposed). For the client, one way to ensure you get what you want, if it's important, is 'named resources' section of the contract. Use it wisely and with awareness. Other way is to be predictable and forthcoming during sales/negotiation/signing process. This is not meant to victim blame in the least, but there's lack of appreciation sometimes that people don't sit and twiddle their thumbs while internal processes grind the approval process to a halt: Frequently, who comes to oral presentation as part of sales cycle is who was available at the time, and who comes to perform the work is who is available at this other time, which may have been a predictable 2 weeks later, or (all too often) a completely unpredictable random 6 months and three weeks later. People you saw in February may not be waiting for you to finally sign and start come September. Oh, and all the other bait & switch practices as well, sometimes intentional -< In practical terms, it largely depends how actually "representative" people during orals were of the actual quality of workforce to deliver the project. Sometimes it's a close match, sometimes not. Ideally it's a fixed-price contract and it doesn't matter - it's vendor's responsibility to deliver, whether with many junior members supervised by senior members or however else, and hopefully contract and SLA and CAT/UAT are well designed.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  It always amazed me how insistent clients were on specific people but also slow to sign contracts as if it was possible for us to hold heads for 6 months while they decided to greenlight a project. That's really on feasible if you pay them to be on the bench, or you deal with us not starting for 3-6 months after you greenlight." Other thing that amazed me was clients dictating when we had heads active versus not. Generally I'd go for a right shifted gradual increase and sharp tail off. But many of our contracts wanted "all heads down" on day one. They also refused to do a shorter term in parallel design contract while we were negotiating. Essentially their requirements were forcing us to burn money with idle hours.

NikolaNovak 4y ago

Right. I've been on both sides of this (person proposed for contract I did not end up on, as well as working with teams different than proposed). For the client, one way to ensure you get what you want, if it's important, is 'named resources' section of the contract. Use it wisely and with awareness. Other way is to be predictable and forthcoming during sales/negotiation/signing process. This is not meant to victim blame in the least, but there's lack of appreciation sometimes that people don't sit and twiddle their thumbs while internal processes grind the approval process to a halt: Frequently, who comes to oral presentation as part of sales cycle is who was available at the time, and who comes to perform the work is who is available at this other time, which may have been a predictable 2 weeks later, or (all too often) a completely unpredictable random 6 months and three weeks later. People you saw in February may not be waiting for you to finally sign and start come September. Oh, and all the other bait & switch practices as well, sometimes intentional -< In practical terms, it largely depends how actually "representative" people during orals were of the actual quality of workforce to deliver the project. Sometimes it's a close match, sometimes not. Ideally it's a fixed-price contract and it doesn't matter - it's vendor's responsibility to deliver, whether with many junior members supervised by senior members or however else, and hopefully contract and SLA and CAT/UAT are well designed.

grogenaut 4y ago
It always amazed me how insistent clients were on specific people but also slow to sign contracts as if it was possible for us to hold heads for 6 months while they decided to greenlight a project. That's really on feasible if you pay them to be on the bench, or you deal with us not starting for 3-6 months after you greenlight." Other thing that amazed me was clients dictating when we had heads active versus not. Generally I'd go for a right shifted gradual increase and sharp tail off. But many of our contracts wanted "all heads down" on day one. They also refused to do a shorter term in parallel design contract while we were negotiating. Essentially their requirements were forcing us to burn money with idle hours.