- Chapter 31: Working with Consultants
- Working with Consultants
- What Are Your Needs?
- Project Manager and Leadership
- Selecting Individual Consultants
- Work Ethic and Attitude
- Large-Scale Project Team Structure
- Preparation for Consultant: Contracts
- Preparation for Consultant: Rates and Fees
- Preparation for Consultant: Fixed-Price Contracts
- Controlling Consulting Project Costs: Change Managementx
- Controlling Consulting Project Costs: Client Involvement
- Controlling Consulting Project Costs: Reviewing the Original Requirements
- Controlling Consulting Project Costs: Weekly Status Reports
- Controlling Consulting Project Costs: Risk and Issues Log
- Controlling Consulting Project Costs: Importance of Database Administrator
- Consulting Work Environment
- Consultant Travel and Costs
- Case Studies of Consultant Behavior
- Case Studies of Client Behavior
- Summary
Controlling Consulting Project Costs: Importance of Database Administrator
When implementing an Oracle Applications project, do not diminish the importance of obtaining experienced database administration (DBA) services. Moreover, it is advisable that the database administrator has applied his experience to the Oracle Applications themselves as opposed to merely managing an Oracle database without the Applications installed.
Careful management of the various Oracle Applications patches and product upgrades can greatly influence project costs. The DBA is usually maintaining and upgrading several different test environments throughout the project. If any of the database environments go down for a significant time during the implementation, the consultants and client staff might literally be out of work, depending on their current assignments. Even a skilled database administrator will apply patches from Oracle that bring down the database. However, the goal here is to have a DBA on the project who is skilled in troubleshooting a database and even in restoring a database from the previous night's backup.
The expense of the consultants becomes keenly apparent when many consultants are waiting on the return of a downed database. The cost of several consultants waiting around can be much more than the cost of paying for a more experienced Oracle Applications DBA (assuming that the higher cost truly obtained higher experience).