Paul is a senior developer and consultant at Hashrocket in Jacksonville Beach, FL. There he leads teams to build large projects for external clients. He has been working professionally in technology for over 10 years and dealt with stakeholders of all shapes and sizes. He is passionate about consulting, TDD, and motorcycles.
Whether your official title says it or not, every one of us is a consultant. Whether it is a time and materials contract with an external entity or dealing with the stakeholder within your company, some amount of consulting is required. One of the reasons we each get hired is to bring our expertise and experience to the project at hand. We have to make technical decisions every day and do our part to guide the project towards something that will be successful, both in the short term and down the road.
At Hashrocket, we deal with clients of all levels of technical and business expertise. We need to handle different clients in different ways, depending on their needs, personality, and budget. I want to share with you some of our stories and the different tactics we use to interact with our clients. From this talk, you'll be able to glean some knowledge from our expertise and apply it to the interactions in your daily work life.
Dealing effectively with the consumers of your work has many aspects to it, including knowing how much information to give and in what format, when to stand up for something, when to concede, and who to get involved on your side. In this talk, I'll discuss these and other important topics for successfully guiding your clients along the path to greatness.
The success of our clients is something we take very seriously at Hashrocket. We work closely with them daily to guide them towards the best product possible that meets their needs and budget. I have learned a lot over the years here and at my previous employments that I want to share with the community. This is not a technical talk, but one that will provide information to aid technical people in their dealings with non-technical contacts.
I am a senior developer at Hashrocket and have over 10 years of professional experience in software development. I have worked with large enterprises and with small start ups. I've made a lot of mistakes, won a lot of battles, and have quite a bit that I want to share.