1) First determine which quadrant you want to be in:

              
    Form of    |           Key Responsibility                       
    Employment | Business as Usual | Knowledge Transfer   
    -----------|----------------------------------------------
               |                   |
    Permanent  | Employee          | Consultant on staff, 
               |                   | see 4
               |                   |
    Temporary  | Contractor,       | Independent (contractor) 
               | see 3             | consultant, see 5

2) Assuming that currently you're a permanent employee responsible for running projects, it would be easier to move just in one direction at a time, that is to say becoming either a temporary employee or specialise on knowledge transfer.

3) Decided to go independent and become a contract PM (that are sometimes mistakenly referred to as "consultants")? The key change is that in addition to running projects you'd become responsible for your own sales, accounts, marketing, work load and training arrangements. You'd have more responsibility, exercise greater control, take bigger risks and probably end up up with better earnings.

Depending where you live all you need to do is to incorporate or join an umbrella company and start looking for contract PM positions.

4) Leaning towards jobs where you would be able to share some of your hard-earned experience in the PM field with others? The easiest route is to join an existing management consultancy and become consultant on staff.

The job would involve establishing project management organisations for external clients or helping them to improve existing PM practises. Once they absorbed the PM wisdom and are able to proceed on their own you'd move on to next assignment. Your performance is going to be judged by the pertinence of your advice in the given circumstances, its value and the speed and quality of the knowledge transfer.

Any background in educating others, valuable contributions made to PM body of knowledge or hard-to-find PM experience would help you greatly to get a foot in the door of most management consultancies.

The difficulty of the job is in the ability to fill knowledge gaps, give relevant advice, catalyse change and get people to the stage where they can maintain the improvement in your absence.

On the positive side accounts, sales, marketing, taxes are all going to be taken care of by the consultancy. The consultancy is likely to give a lot of support and guidance with the ongoing personal training plan in addition to extensive coaching and mentoring by senior consultants.

5) Coming from the employee background to become an independent consultant is likely to be tricky. You'd need both to establish an organisational structure for dealing with auxiliary functions as in 3), get known and recommended within the community as an expert in project management and then once on assignment to figure out how to apply your knowledge to help others climb onto the next level of PM expertise.

However if you decide to select this route you could try finding teams with little or no PM knowledge who are too busy chunking out deliverables and offer them your services to help establish and initially run a project organisation. At some point however, they would need to take over and you'll be on your way to help other teams.

More Links

• Contractor to consultant: Part I – comparing contracting and consulting
• Contractor to consultant: Part II – The Consulting Approach
• Contractor to consultant: Part III – Making the Transition

Quick answer is join a consulting firm ;-> (No we are not hiring...).

Seriously, that is a good first step, to introduce you to the Business of consulting. Doing the work is usually not the hardest part, it is the marketing to drive back-to-back or concurrent business, admin, payroll, taxes, etc.

Hire a GOOD virtual assistant to keep you honest in your accounting and marketing efforts.

Darrel Raynor

In the ideal situation I'd look for someone I know who already established own consulting business and try to join them. However I know it can be hard. Personally if I wanted to go this way I know only one person who co-owns consulting business and I'd prefer not to work with the guy.

The other way is starting your own company. The problem here is getting first deals to build references, portfolio etc. Then all you need is to earn for your living so that's a darn good motivation to achieve success. If you choose this way you should:

• Know what it takes to run a company in a place you live
• Have some documents and templates you'd need in your everyday work like: offer, agreement, NDA, audit report etc.
• Be prepared you're going to be not only a consultant but also a salesperson and marketing person

The third way is as Darrel suggests getting hired by a consulting firm where you can learn how this business looks like from inside and prepare yourself better to go on your own later on. What you would also get is a bunch of business contact you can use as hooks to leverage your own business later.

I think the answer to your question depends on your market.

In my area, I'm not aware of many consultancy firms that hire software or high tech Project Managers. Most consultancy firms with PMs on staff are real estate, building and construction managers. The IT and High Tech market is so volatile that no firm could afford to keep consultants on a pay-role when there is no work for them. The firms that do exist are very big, very sweat-shop oriented and don't pay as much as a freelance consultant working through an agency would get.

Around here, the route for Project Management consultants is to incorporate and subcontract through one of many agencies. As a corporation, you handle your own bookkeeping, income tax installments, quarterly reports, etc (talk to an accountant). You can avoid some of the government paperwork by not incorporating and registering a business as a Sole Proprietor, but most agencies do not prefer that. The extra degree of separation from an "employee" that a subcontract with a corporation gives looks better in their eyes when your contracts extend beyond a year. They don't want the government knocking on their door saying "how can you claim this is a contractor when they have been working at the same place doing the same thing in the same way as all these employees?"

The advantage of this approach is that you can spread yourself as thin as you want. Distribute your resume to every agency you hear of. The agencies establish and try to maintain relationships with government and corporations who need PMs for fixed amounts of time. You are free to pick a contract with whatever agency finds something for you first.

Some of these agencies like to present themselves to clients as a "stable of dedicated consultants". They are trying to give both the consultants and the clients the impression that they are a "big happy, stable, family". Generating a sense of loyalty in their consultants benefits them, they hope, by causing a consultant to think twice about going with a contract from another firm. Make no mistake, if your contract completes and business dries up for them, they will have no loyalty toward you. The flip side is that if business has not dried up and you are seen as one of their loyal contractors, you could be given first grabs at contracts that many other freelance consultants are vying for. You'll also get invited to an open bar Christmas party.

You will be contractually restricted from working directly with any clients for something like a year after your assignment ends. Keep in contact with those clients anyway. Some companies do hire consultants directly and its sweet to be able to put the 20% cut that some agencies take directly into your pocket. If this happens two years down the road, the agency has nothing to complain about. Besides, the clients will form your network... not so much the account reps you deal with at the agencies. Build and maintain your network!!

A few options:

1. Find people who are willing to pay you for your knowledge and expertise.

2. Join a company that has customers looking for someone with your knowledge and expertise.

3. Get to together with colleagues that offer complimentary services and together pitch customers (or see if you can offer your services to their existing clients).

For any consulting I recommend reading Gerald Weinberg's book "Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully".

This is an excellent book that will help you understand what it means to be a consultant and how you will interact with clients.

It's also a very entertaining read, so you won't get bored. :)

The Wall Street Journal recently published a nice article on How to Succeed as a Consultant.

Thought you might find it helpful.