Software developer to mgmt consultant?

Are there any IT consultants you've worked with/met in the past who you might be able to network with?

MBA

I have a similar background; 6 years as a software developer, recent experience in IT strategy, and a masters in IT from Northwestern. Have you had any luck finding advice on how to get into the management consulting field?

Can anyone offer insights on how software development/IT strategy experience can be leveraged as an asset in the management consulting field? Any experience working with a former IT professional on a strategy consulting project?

Maybe look into Accenture?

@happypants: Accenture doesn't strike me as a great place for management consulting. SAP implementations, sure. High level strategic direction? Not so much. That's imo; take that for what it's worth.

@Jill - I think it would depend on your actual experience, and the narrative you're able to come up with. If you just sat in a cube and coded for 6 years, you probably don't have much to say about strategy. If however, you coded for 3 years, and gradually moved into a more managerial role where you're making decisions that touch on things like:

• where do we locate our data center, and why? what's our recovery strategy in the event of a disaster? do we have two data centers? if yes, are they geographically far enough apart that a single disaster is unlikely to affect them both (i.e. nuclear blast in texas won't affect a second data center in washington). if no, do we have a contracted resource for failover (i.e. an IBM that provides outsourced DR capability)

• what do we want our sdlc to look like, and why? what are the pros / cons of different approaches to development? agile or not? etc.

• what range of technologies do we want in house? why some and not others? large variety or small? how does this impact our ability to manage them? (os patches, framework updates, etc.)

• how important is scalability, both in terms of network volume and storage capacity? why? how does that tie to our particular business model (i.e. if you're facebook, your network scalability concerns are far greater than if you're say, Dole, where your business is selling bananas).

• what are our security concerns? why? brand impact? are there regulatory drivers? (health care == hipaa; credit cards == PCI; etc). How important are they? Will a breach kill your business (i.e. disclosure of health insurance data might destroy an insurance company, but disclosure of Dole's banana sales - maybe not as catastrophic).

etc. etc.

If you can talk about how you were progressively involved in higher and higher level conversations, you can create a narrative that ties your experience to an interest in management consulting, which by it's nature is high level and business focused. IT exists to support the business, so the "higher level" you go on the IT strategy side, the closer you get to intersecting with the business needs that are driving that IT strategy. That's where you make the leap from IT to Business.