| "Consult" can mean a couple different things. Are you working as a contractor just focused on improving the dev workflow? If so, there's not much I can offer you other than to keep beating the drum and trying to get some attention on the issue. But if you were brought in as a proper "consultant", then you might be in the perfect spot to address this. Companies like this bring in outside experts for one of two reasons: either so they'll say exactly what the person hiring them wants them to say, or so they'll be free of any political ties inside the company and free to say what needs to be said. You'll already know if you're the former. You need to be the expert they hired you to be. See if you can arrange half-hour interviews from developers on up to the top of the company about the product, how it's developed, how it's sold, etc. Ask how development resources are scheduled. Quantify the time lost to working with the development environment. Don't ask for permission to do these things. Tell them you'd "like to" or you "need to". Most importantly, propose solutions. Describe them as "bold" and "visionary" for the upper management. Talk about cost savings in developer time and tools. Talk about the extra time/cost of on-boarding new employees. Show Google trend data and stats from job postings to show their pool of potential employees has moved on to more modern development stacks, and the quality and quantity of new hires is at risk. Remember, you were brought in to say all those painful things people may actually be thinking but don't feel they can say. And if you can't get anywhere with anybody, that's your report right there. Go right to the head of the company and say "I can't continue with the work you hired me to do because your employees are not engaged enough or committed enough to change. I was brought in to fix technical problems, but this is cultural". BE the expert. Be the one who can say all the bad things everybody is thinking and walk out the door with a check at the end. Edit: also, pay close attention to seren's answer. There are no mustache-twirling villains here, just people trying to do their job day-to-day and not get fired. |