Those traceability artifacts are in order

1. the signed statement of work - this is the contract that is legally binding.

2. The project kick off meeting where we agree on the mechanics of the project and a high level understanding of the expectations

3. Recorded, transcribed and these days using Gong to summarize the meetings, deep dive discovery sessions.

4. A video recorded approvals of the design proposals as I am walking through it.

5. A shared Jira backlog that I create and walk through them with it throughout the project

6. A shared decision log recording what decisions were made and who on the client side made them.

7. A handoff - also video recorded where the client says they are good going forward.

I lead 2-7 or do it all myself depending on the size of the project.

At no point am I going to say or expect anyone on my project to say they spent 4 hours on Tuesday writing Terraform.

But then again, my number one rule about consulting that I refuse to break is that I don’t do staff augmentation. I want to work on a contract with requirements and a “definition of done”. I control the execution of the project and the “how” within limits.

I want to be judged on outcomes not how many jira tickets I closed.

When I was at AWS I worked with a client that directly hired a former laid off ProServe L6 consultant. He was very much forced into staff augmentation where he did have to track everything he did by the hour.

You could tell he thought that was the fifth level of hell going from strategy consulting to staff augmentation. It paid decently. But he was definitely looking and I recommended him as a staff consultant at my current company (full time direct hire)

FWIW: I specialize in cloud + app dev - “application modernization”