Michael Krigsman has posted a podcast interview on his Project Failures blog with Brian Sommer on the subject of project management and system integrators or "consultants" as they like to call themselves.

I urge CIOs and other IT decision makers to go over and have a listen. Sommer point out the elephant in the room when it comes to big-ticket consulting firms today, which is that they have become beholden to technology vendors and corporate bottom-lines, and are more interested in selling you as much product and service as they can at as high a margin as possible than they are in finding appropriate solutions to your IT issues.

I call this the elephant in the room, but of course widespread distrust of consultants is hardly a new phenomena among IT leadership. The difference, as Sommer points out, is that it isn't simply self-centered consultants that are the issue, but rather the motivations driving the consultants you pick. If more of their profit is predicated on pushing a particular solution down your throat than it is on finding you the ideal solution, that's something you need to think about when you are structuring your deal with them. Sommer suggests finding smaller firms which are typically more focused on client advocacy... this isn't a bad rule of thumb, since smaller firms are not so much on the radar of the large software vendors who relentlessly court and offer significant kickbacks to larger IT firms. It might be even better, however, to simply require complete disclosure from firms bidding for your work over where the money is coming from. If it isn't from you, don't expect to be at the top of their list when competing interests surface.

As with all good things, you might have to pay more to get a truly objective consultancy working for you, but it's cheaper in the long run for three reasons: You won't spend extra on recommended software that is ill-suited for your needs; you won't have to replace it later; and you won't be bleeding all the extra money in staff time that comes with trying to hammer an inappropriate system into place. Good advice is worth paying for.