John Olson wrote a wonderful article on the value of consultants ("The Value of Consulting Services," PBDJ, Vol. 7, issue 11). In it he discussed contractor valuation, gave excellent hiring and searching advice, and provided some explanation of how a contractor can be put to use. I'd like to offer an extended view of who some of our contractors are and how best to use them. There are also some tips on how to avoid abusing them.

Contractors can provide the boost needed to finish and polish a difficult project, help you move into a new level of technology, and elevate the performance of your regular staff. However, if handled poorly, contractors can rankle, grow surly, stop communicating, and become equal parts terminator and arrogant coder.

One key to working with contractors is recognizing the beauty of every individual and allowing them to focus on what they do well. We have a variety of contractors, and when they're available to me for project work, I enjoy their talents and valuable input.

The Analyst can figure out any system, get to the bottom of the user's business requirements, and ensure that you get business user buy-in at the time of implementation. The Analyst is amazing at driving out requirements, charming the staff, and an absolute master of diagramming and picture making. Use the Analyst for this kind of work, but avoid using her to develop leading-edge products. She tends to lean on her current skills and acquires new ones with the same caution and introspection with which she approaches your business problems. Keep these people happy.

Leather Pants is the grinder. He'll work as many hours of overtime as you want and take on as much work as you assign. The Grinder keeps his butt in the chair. This is a contractor who may or may not be the furthest along in technical advancement, but is a rock-solid coder who can crank it out day in, day out. These people just love to program, and God help you if you get in their way. They may settle on a long-term support project and rest there, renewing their contract repeatedly. These are workhorses, but watch the attitude; they can begin to think of themselves as employees.

The Incredible Half-Man does some of your work and some work for the three other clients he's stringing along. Although you're paying him for a full day, he's working some hours for you and some for the others. You'll have to watch him closely. This kind of abuse is rare, but the symptoms are easy to spot. You're giving him tasks that drag on far longer than they should. Too many phone calls and some extraordinarily long lunches. Apply strong time lines and hold him to them, and you'll find your way with Half-Man in a hurry.

The Rocket Man is the one who takes you into the new age. He's the one experimenting with a beta version of C and writing interfaces to it from a VMS machine through his palmtop. This guy may be cantankerous. He may even have an engineering background and it may be best to keep him in a quiet place where he can practice his craft. He's the one who actually makes computer science into a science. There's no end to what he can connect, what languages he can use, or what technology is at his disposal. He never has to ask to be put on the new stuff; he'll be the one leading the team that's using it. Know that it's a mistake to put the Rocket Man in front of a room full of business users, as he can be incapable of breaking the message of technology into the granular parts they need to digest. Use him to break new ground.

Ms. Wonderful is quite convinced that she's the greatest thing since the GUI front end. She's unaware of what's going on around her and tends to avoid helping anyone. This is a programmer who has great talent, may be spectacular, but the attitude that goes along with it can be intolerable. Ms. Wonderful really does get the work done, and it may be helpful to allow for a telecommute in her case. The ego can sometimes get in the way of team chemistry, but the productivity is irresistible.

The Professor will certainly bring your staff into the new millennium. Technically he's just as curious as the Rocket Man, but instead of the surly attitude, he's a teacher. This guy taught your staff how to use the PFC when it was first released, and he was building distributed apps when the rest of the world was uncovering the secrets of the nonvisual. Now he's connecting his Jaguar server to his HTML DataWindow and writing the interfaces with ease. He'll be glad to take the time to bring staff members up to speed on the current technology, because in the end he's not interested in the long-term support and tweaking of the apps he's created. He just wants to move on to Java for wireless slot cars. Use him to bring your staff up to speed and increase their skill sets. These guys are hard to keep around for long.

The Power User Supremo is the one who came in, trained your people extensively on the new software, and enjoyed the atmosphere more than the pressure of the travel and the constant interview. Once he finds a groove, he can do endless good things for you. This is a user who can write some queries, but who ultimately doesn't know how to code. He can get a strong quality assurance program in place for you, set up elaborate test plans, and train and train and train. He'll seemingly never wear out his welcome. The only caution here is to make sure he lets your business users grow and adjust to the new climate. It can be hard for them to let go.

These are a few of the unique personalities you can encounter when working with contractors. Your job as project manager or interviewer is to identify who you're dealing with, then fit them in to the team. If you handle it right, your business users will love you, your projects will be done on time, and your staff will advance their skill sets and rise to the level of those working around them. Good contractors are indeed worth their weight in gold.

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