>2. Specialize. Start looking for commonalities between the projects that you do. Build tooling for them. Maybe publish some open source stuff. Build a specialty practice around that. You can do this repeatedly, for different areas; eventually, you'll do it for business verticals.
A former manager of mine, who had some consulting background, once told me that the big management consulting firms like McKinsey do something like this. They compile tons of detailed case studies from former engagements (that's what consulting gigs are called in that field) and then reuse the hell out of them for new gigs, thereby saving a lot of their staff's working time on those. Also probably surprise the clients (who may not know about this practice) by being able to come up with results sooner due to this.
Haha, I was a consultant and you paint a very idealistic picture of the situation. It usually went something like this in my experience:
1. Partner hears client is interested in a certain type of engagement
2. Partner promises that their firm has extensive expertise in the area
3. Partner commits to writing a proposal for the potential project
4. Lower level staff scramble to talk to other consultants in their firm (same industry) and dig through old case studies to figure out if #2 is actually true
5. Staff hurriedly compiles a proposal deck from a mish-mash of slides from other projects that are mildly relevant
6. Multiple iterative feedback loops where the partner gives vague suggestions on improvements and staff makes the changes
7. Send finalized proposal to design/production team
If you win the proposal, you use some lead time before the project to build an approach using past projects. In rare cases there would be a firm-sponsored template or framework (often when there is associated whitepapers or other marketing materials), but in general the situation was a more reactive "I do not have time to start this from scratch, so what can I gather from past projects?" and less of a proactive "let's build a template to reuse for new projects"
>Haha, I was a consultant and you paint a very idealistic picture of the situation. It usually went something like this in my experience:
1. I did not claim to "paint" the full picture.
2. I did not paint the picture. Was saying what my ex-manager said to me.
3. The plural of anecdote is not data.
Interesting to hear of your experience, though.
Regardless of your experience, systematically collecting and analyzing data on prior projects, with a view to applying the learning to future ones, is useful, for any discipline, not just management consulting or software engineering. That's part of how progress in any field happens.
Also, I'm well aware of the "golmaal" (Hindi slang term) that goes on in any field. Hey, it's common knowledge. But that does not invalidate work of the good actors in the field.
Sorry, I didn't explain what golmaal means in English, also may have used the wrong word. I meant something like skullduggery, but golmaal means chaos or confusion (according to Quora, at least).
I think it comes to the same thing, as I start to try and get ventures off the ground I'm finding that there's nothing like experience to improve your chances of success. Put another way: 90% of success is being successful.
A former manager of mine, who had some consulting background, once told me that the big management consulting firms like McKinsey do something like this. They compile tons of detailed case studies from former engagements (that's what consulting gigs are called in that field) and then reuse the hell out of them for new gigs, thereby saving a lot of their staff's working time on those. Also probably surprise the clients (who may not know about this practice) by being able to come up with results sooner due to this.