Deloitte

As a consultant contributing to the cloud migration of a large, well-known corporation, I have excellent professional growth and hands-on experience. As a team lead, I had opportunities to lead client-facing iteration reviews, mentor, and learn from teammates.

In retrospect, several architectural decisions offer room for improvement. This is expected in consulting, and the lessons learned should be applied to future engagements. Specifically, we used a variety of manual deployment techniques early and transitioned to using CI/CD pipeline automation later. An internal best-practice demo environment would avoid rework and enable moving to new technologies more efficiently.

Focus on model environments similar to the client's that keep up with ever-changing technology. Ideally, consultants provide the parameters to implement the cloud resources but don’t need to design the approach. These are worthwhile internal efforts for experienced technical experts to boost client engagement, effectiveness, and productivity.