I am tempted to write on this topic as significant chunk of experienced consultants face this dilemma in terms of choosing next big step in their career path.
A sample list of title chart provided below for Consulting and Program Management tracks in Indian IT organizations.
What are the factors that determine for a consultant to continue in consulting or move over to program management? Are there any external factors that influence this decision or is this an individual choice? Do IT organizations provide opportunities in both these tracks or is this career path only on paper?
This is specific to India, as the approach is different in west. My observation is consultants in west tend to continue in consulting in their specialization area. Consider an experienced consultant in Financials (SAP FICO), he continues to focus on Financials with extended product portfolio like Advanced controlling, Planning & Budgeting, Consolidations etc.
India as an IT outsourcing hub has an increasing number of projects, thus creating more opportunities in Project Management space. A question might arise why not an experienced consultant continue in core consulting in an offshore project. This approach is not profitable for an organization to have experienced consultant doing hands on consulting work for an application maintenance project as the billing rates are lower than the cost of an experienced consultant.
What are the opportunities available in consulting path in India? This question can be easily answered for Project Management path. As you grow you tend to manage bigger accounts, multiple accounts and then move on to client account management. There are lots of opportunities within each organization for these roles.
Not the same case with consulting roles. Opportunities for growth seem to be limited. Experienced consultants get involved in pre-sales activity and Center of Excellence (COE) activities. These opportunities are limited and COE's are treated as cost centers. Apart from this, if you talk about Technology consulting with specific to a tool/ product/software, these tend to get out dated in this dynamic economic environment, posing a challenge to upgrade skills on continuous basis. Organizations except for very few tend to invest in training for consultants to upgrade their skills only after securing a project.
Though organizations have career paths for both consulting and Program management, in reality there are not many opportunities in top layer of consulting path in India.
| Differentiating Factors | Consulting | Program Management |
| Skill set | Niche skill with experience in domain area and functional consulting | Experience built up over the years by managing small to large teams with PMP certification |
| Opportunities and Growth | Excellent opportunities till certain number of years say Upto 8 -12 years | Opportunities exist throughout the ladder / career path (Project, Delivery role and Account Management) |
| Risks | Stagnated at Middle management level and need for constant upgradation of skills | Slightly Monotonous |
| Type of projects | Implementation and Rollout | Implementation, Rollout, Application support / maintenance. |
In my opinion in Indian context, organizational forces / factors seem to dominate compared to individual choices. I have seen some of my senior colleagues, though were excellent in consulting, moved into Program management as there was no clarity in consulting path and organization was looking for delivery / project management roles. If an Individual would like to continue in consulting, he will have to move onsite or start their own boutique consulting firm as there are limited or no opportunities at the top of the ladder. As an industry, are we not losing highly skilled resources by way of experienced consultants moving to Program Management?
IT vendors and customers can partner to explore the opportunities to utilize the experienced consulting professionals. In times of dynamic economic environment, customers need this skill set to address changing requirements proactively.
It is time for out of box thinking solutions to address this issue. It will be interesting to know if any big consulting firms or any organizations for that matter addressed this issue.
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