Roles and responsibilities of Navision Consultant

vyanku · 2010-02-23

Hi,
What should be the roles and resplonsibilities of Navision consultant having 3+ year experiance?

chengalasettyvsrao · 2010-02-23

are u working as Technical or Functional Consultant ?

jannestig · 2010-02-23

I would let Dave answer this as he likes a rant

But Doesn't your company define your role and your responsabilites in your job description ???

vyanku · 2010-02-23

I am working as Technical Consultant.

anityam · 2010-02-23

are u a stupid..u r working for 3 yrs n u dont know wat shld be d role n responsibility of a nav technical guy...common...

vyanku · 2010-02-23

I just wanted to know the roles and responsibilities of Navision consultant . What it shoud be ?

Belias · 2010-02-23

i think that all depends from how good are you and what have you done up to now (in terms of important projects)...i think that a 3 years developer can be smarter than a 10 years one, sometimes...
It also depends on how much your boss "knows" what is the job of the developer (in your specific case): i mean that if the boss cannot recognise a working (but crappy) solution from a well designed one, no matter how much you're good, older colleagues will be always above you...
Unfortunately, in Italy, meritocracy is not diffused... :thumbsdown:

chengalasettyvsrao · 2010-02-23

anityam wrote:

are u a stupid..

Mr. Anityam,

You should be polite.

This is forum for discussion and to solve problems of members or to help. We all should not use the rude langage. We can only try to help .

Belias · 2010-02-23

anityam wrote:

are u a stupid..u r working for 3 yrs n u dont know wat shld be d role n responsibility of a nav technical guy...common...

and please don't write posts as a teenager would write an SMS

...people how don't know english very well can get confused!

chengalasettyvsrao · 2010-02-23

vyanku wrote:

I just wanted to know the roles and responsibilities of Navision consultant . What it shoud be ?

check your PM , I sent the Roles and Resposibilities of navision consultant.

anityam · 2010-02-23

i am sorry for that..if i hurt anyone. but my intention was not that. sorry once again...and now i think my English is good and readable for those people who don't understand this language quite well.

David_Singleton · 2010-02-23

chengalasettyvsrao wrote:

vyanku wrote:

I just wanted to know the roles and responsibilities of Navision consultant . What it shoud be ?

check your PM , I sent the Roles and Resposibilities of navision consultant.

[-X [-X [-X [-X [-X [-X [-X [-X

chengalasettyvsrao this is a community, and the idea of a community is to share. If you have a solution or can help someone then make it public so every one has access to it.

kriki · 2010-02-23

[Topic moved from 'NAV/Navision' forum to 'General Chat' forum]

matttrax · 2010-02-23

The roles of a consultant will differ from company to company.

If you were for a company that has people as Project Managers, Implementers, Developers, Support, etc your role will be very different from a company that only employs Implementers and Developers.

What you do in your job is up to your employer. If you want to take on more responsibility in the company you can talk to your manager about it.

kine · 2010-02-23

I think that main responsibilities are:

1) Do everything to make working, upgradeable, maintainable solution for your customer (with complexity according the budget)
2) Do not let dumb people do dump decisions (of course after some discussion, what is dumb for you, could be clever for someone else) -even if it is customer (but you need to be good in diplomacy)
3) Understand the background behind any customer's request to not do "what they asked for" but rather "what they need to solve their problem" and explain them this...
4) Tell others possible consequences of their decisions if you see them and they not...

kine · 2010-02-23

--- edited ---
My mistake...

vyanku · 2010-02-23

Thanks Kine,chengalasettyvsrao.

matttrax :
The roles of a consultant will differ from company to company.

If you were for a company that has people as Project Managers, Implementers, Developers, Support, etc your role will be very different from a company that only employs Implementers and Developers.

you are right. Same thing is happend to me. In previous company I was doing everything project management,development,implemetation,support and now in new company my work is very specific.

so here the roles are different than previous

Belias · 2010-02-23

Belias wrote:

i think that all depends from how good are you and what have you done up to now (in terms of important projects)...i think that a 3 years developer can be smarter than a 10 years one, sometimes...
It also depends on how much your boss "knows" what is the job of the developer (in your specific case): i mean that if the boss cannot recognise a working (but crappy) solution from a well designed one, no matter how much you're good, older colleagues will be always above you...
Unfortunately, in Italy, meritocracy is not diffused... :thumbsdown:

Before my boss read it...

I want to point out that before I was not talking about my personal situation...besides that, in a lot of italian companies (in every sector, i think), the older you are, the more important you become...regardless your real capacity...to connect to the topic title: more important means more responsibilities...

Another thing to add...in my company, there's the general feeling that a developer is less important than an analyst... :thumbsdown:

David_Singleton · 2010-02-23

Belias wrote:

Another thing to add...in my company, there's the general feeling that a developer is less important than an analyst... :thumbsdown:

That sounds right to me. Not that either is unimportant, but clearly analysis is the more important.

kapil4dynamics · 2010-02-23

David Singleton wrote:

Belias wrote:

Another thing to add...in my company, there's the general feeling that a developer is less important than an analyst... :thumbsdown:

That sounds right to me. Not that either is unimportant, but clearly analysis is the more important.

Yeah but this is the place where I have seen blunders happening more than development area and which obviously get onto developers, in the end.

Though that is unfortunate but it happens. :-$

David_Singleton · 2010-02-23

kapil4dynamics wrote:

David Singleton wrote:

Belias wrote:

Another thing to add...in my company, there's the general feeling that a developer is less important than an analyst... :thumbsdown:

That sounds right to me. Not that either is unimportant, but clearly analysis is the more important.

Yeah but this is the place where I have seen blunders happening more than development area and which obviously get onto developers, in the end. Though that is unfortunate but it happens. :-$

Which is exactly why analysis is more important. Once the analysis is done the damage is done.

Belias · 2010-02-24

I'm not talking about analysis vs. development, but analyst vs. developer...
I mean that a skilled developer can make his program support the most strange change requests (analyst errors can be considered as change requests).
In my opinion, yet analysis is more important that development, a developer *CAN* support analyst errors.
I think that a developer should be as important as the analyst

kine · 2010-02-24

Each time it is the Team who create the application. And you know, chain is as strong as weakest link in it. If someone from the team is not skilled enough, rest of the team must count with it.

Analyst for me is someone between consultant and developer - who takes the request from consultant and transform it into description of tasks for developer and during this process, he must think about the root cause of the request and offer the right solution for it, taking into account the technical side of the solution etc. In many cases, the consultants are trying to be analysts, but they do not have enough technical experiences to make correct decision. When developer tries to be an analyst, he have not enough experiences with the functional side of the application or doesn't understand the "customer's" side (that "Customers are laying" 8) and you need to go deeper). In both cases it leads to blind implementations of each request of customer in a way the customer wants it. And this is way to hell. It means, analyst must be consultant with technical experiences, or developer with functional consultant experiences (you know, the core developers are "kind analysts" in most cases, consultants are "expressive drivers" in most cases, those two types do not understand each other very well...), thus you need someone in the middle, who is able to be expressive (to talk with the customer, debate , not just silently listen), but still could go deep into the problem and think about it.

Good company with experienced employees must be able to offer the correct solutions for correct root problems of the customer. And for this you need mix of good consultant and developers (and analysts) which are creating the TEAM...

Belias · 2010-02-24

I oversimplified it, but the concept i wanted to explain was the same: all people in the team are important.

I just pointed out that usually the development is seen as a low-level work, and for this reason sometimes the development is commissioned to "offshore companies" (low-level work must be cheap, isn't it? :roll: )...the result of the work of this company is usually bad (as we can see from some posts in this forum).
Giving away the development is obviously not "team working", and it gets even worse when the developers are not skilled enough for the requests of the analysis.
BTW, i think that you have far more working experience than me, and i'm here to hear your experiences about this and to learn something... :thumbsup:

kriki · 2010-02-24

kine wrote:

3) Understand the background behind any customer's request to not do "what they asked for" but rather "what they need to solve their problem" and explain them this...

A trick I read how to approach this is : ask at least 5 times WHY the customer wants it.
E.g.
Customer: I want some report.
You : (1) WHY do you want it?
Customer : I need it.
You : (2) WHY do you need it?
Customer : I had it in the old system to give me certain info.
You : (3) WHY do you need that 'certain' info?
Customer : ...

A lot of times you will find out that the info is not really needed or can be obtained in another (already existing) way.

Belias wrote:

I just pointed out that usually the development is seen as a low-level work, and for this reason sometimes the development is commissioned to "offshore companies" (low-level work must be cheap, isn't it? :roll: )...the result of the work of this company is usually bad (as we can see from some posts in this forum).
Giving away the development is obviously not "team working", and it gets even worse when the developers are not skilled enough for the requests of the analysis.
BTW, i think that you have far more working experience than me, and i'm here to hear your experiences about this and to learn something... :thumbsup:

I have the idea that it is a common Italian problem. I also noticed it a few times. A junior-fresh-from-school analyst can cost the customer more than a senior programmer!

kine · 2010-02-24

A trick I read how to approach this is : ask at least 5 times WHY the customer wants it.
E.g.
Customer: I want some report.
You : (1) WHY do you want it?
Customer : I need it.
You : (2) WHY do you need it?
Customer : I had it in the old system to give me certain info.
You : (3) WHY do you need that 'certain' info?
Customer : ...

Yes, this works... in most cases the person answer "hey, I do not know... ok, I will think about it and I will tell you later if I really need it..." :-)

bstoyano · 2010-02-24

kriki, I like your example very much, but don't you think that in this manner the NAV Consultant might find himself in the area of designing the business processes of the Customer. Is this part of the job of the consultant as well? To try to teach the customer how to do his business in the proper way?

David_Singleton · 2010-02-24

kriki wrote:

kine wrote:

3) Understand the background behind any customer's request to not do "what they asked for" but rather "what they need to solve their problem" and explain them this...

A trick I read how to approach this is : ask at least 5 times WHY the customer wants it.
E.g.
Customer: I want some report.
You : (1) WHY do you want it?
Customer : I need it.
You : (2) WHY do you need it?
Customer : I had it in the old system to give me certain info.
You : (3) WHY do you need that 'certain' info?
Customer : ...

A lot of times you will find out that the info is not really needed or can be obtained in another (already existing) way.

\:D/ =D> =D> =D> =D> =D>

This is exactly what I do. And it really is the best way.

kriki · 2010-02-24

bstoyano wrote:

kriki, I like your example very much, but don't you think that in this manner the NAV Consultant might find himself in the area of designing the business processes of the Customer. Is this part of the job of the consultant as well? To try to teach the customer how to do his business in the proper way?

Yes and yes. You can do business in a lot of ways and there is no "proper way", but a way that is better or worse. And this also depends on the ERP you use.
So, you need to teach him to do business in the best way using NAV.

David_Singleton · 2010-02-24

kriki wrote:

I have the idea that it is a common Italian problem. I also noticed it a few times. A junior-fresh-from-school analyst can cost the customer more than a senior programmer!

Its everywhere, not just Italy. In fact I have done many tests, and the final cost of a development project is inversely proportional to the quality of the developer. We did some test cases when we were looking to use off shore developers in India. In one project, we gave the same programming spec to one contractor that charged $180 per hour and to one offshore company charging $22 per hour. The $180 programmer was in the end fractionally cheaper. We deliberately left the analysis ambiguous, the Offshore developer sent us back code that did what "he thought" it should do, the $180 guy sent the spec back saying "sorry not enough information". What was interesting, was jut the time I had to spend going back and forth with the off shore company, I spent more time than if I had just written the code myself.

Of course if you have an analyst that can virtually write the code, so that all the "developer" does is type the code into the editor, then you can use cheap developers, but then the analyst really is the developer with a typist as an assistant.

In today's market where there is an abundance of resource, (sorry to be mean to those newbies starting out and looking for jobs) but there really is no market for juniors. This is scary, because the recession is going to be over soon (already over in some regions) and the community is really not ready for the next boom, because there is now almost an 18 month glut where companies are punching out cheap code instead of spending the time training the next batch of developers.

David_Singleton · 2010-02-24

bstoyano wrote:

...Is this part of the job of the consultant as well? To try to teach the customer how to do his business in the proper way?

Most definitely YES. He or She would not be a consultant if they did not show the customer better ways to run their business.

That's what a consultant is there to do.

My main role in at a customer site is to show a customer how to be more profitable, not to design new code for them.

In fact the first thing I do in any project I come into is look for code to remove.

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Categories

Roles and responsibilities of Navision Consultant

Answers