Software consulting has two parts: figuring out what the right answer is, and communicating it clearly. AI tools have meaningfully improved both.
Here’s how that works in practice, and what it means if you’re working with me.
What Good Software Consulting Actually Involves
Before we get to the AI part, let’s be clear about what consulting actually is. Because most people get it wrong.
Discovery. Understanding your business, your current systems, your constraints, and your goals. This can’t be rushed. It requires genuine listening and the experience to ask the right questions.
Analysis. Understanding what the options are, what the trade-offs of each look like in your specific context, and what the risks are.
Recommendation. Giving you a clear, prioritized recommendation with the reasoning behind it. Not “here are six options with equal merit” — a real recommendation.
Implementation guidance. Helping you or your team execute. This might be hands-on development, code review, process definition, or team coaching.
AI tools improve the analysis, communication, and implementation guidance phases significantly. Discovery still requires human judgment and relationship.
How AI Improves Analysis
Research is faster. When I’m researching a technical option — a new library, a design pattern, an integration approach — AI speeds it up. I can explore more options in less time, which means broader analysis before I make a recommendation.
Comparing options is more structured. AI helps me produce structured comparisons of technical options. It doesn’t replace judgment about what’s right for a specific client — but it means I can produce a cleaner, more complete analysis.
Finding failure modes. I describe an approach and ask “what could go wrong?” This is useful because it sometimes surfaces considerations I hadn’t fully thought through. The AI doesn’t always get this right, but it prompts useful thinking.
Codebase analysis. When I’m doing a codebase audit, AI helps me work through unfamiliar code faster. Understanding what a large, poorly-documented codebase does used to take days. Now it takes hours.
How AI Improves Communication
Consultants are paid partly for analysis and partly for the ability to communicate it clearly. AI helps with the communication.
Written recommendations. I’ve always been good at verbal communication about technical topics. Written communication — reports, proposals, recommendations — used to take more time. AI speeds up the drafting while I maintain the content and judgment.
Technical documentation. When I’m producing technical documentation — architecture diagrams’ written descriptions, API documentation, process documents — AI accelerates this significantly.
Executive summaries. Translating technical findings into something a non-technical executive can act on is a skill. AI helps me draft these efficiently, and I refine them to make sure the framing is right.
What AI Doesn’t Improve in Consulting
The trust relationship. Consulting relationships depend on trust — the belief that the advice you’re getting is honest and in your interest. This is built through track record, through clear communication, and through being willing to tell clients things they don’t want to hear. AI doesn’t affect this.
Industry and domain knowledge. Understanding manufacturing. Understanding the specific pressures mid-market businesses face. Knowing how a typical ERP integration goes wrong. This comes from experience, not AI training data.
The judgment calls. When I tell a client “don’t do that, here’s what you should do instead,” I’m applying judgment formed over 20 years of seeing what works and what doesn’t. AI can inform this judgment but can’t replace it.
Being right. AI produces plausible-sounding answers. Knowing whether the plausible answer is the right one requires expertise. The value of a consultant is the quality of the judgment, not the speed of generating an answer.
What This Means for Clients
Working with me in a consulting capacity, you get:
- Faster analysis because research and documentation are more efficient
- Clearer communication because drafting support improves my written work
- Same quality of judgment because that comes from experience, not tools
The improvement is real but focused. I’m not faster at understanding your business. I’m faster at synthesizing and communicating once I do.
If you’re working through a technical decision that has significant consequences and want an honest expert perspective, let’s schedule a consulting conversation.