A short list of invaluable tools for the independent data/IT consultant:

Nowadays we have so many powerful tooling available for free or at a very low cost. Over the past months, I’ve used these to create what I refer to as a “context castle” to build a knowledge base of the client’s environment, and help them with architecture decisions or migrations.

  1. Apple Notes (or equivalent) - Write everything down, so you don’t have to ask twice. Learn to love bullets, and sub-bullets to group related info. Always highlight TODO’s and Questions in the notes for circling back later.
  2. Excalidraw.com (and its VSCode Plugin) - Try to create a visual architecture diagram as quickly as possible so you have something to reference and talk about with the client. Nothing is more straining than listening to someone explain complex software architecture without any visuals. Excalidraw also supports importing Mermaid diagrams, more on that later.
  3. Slack’s AI Summary - Once you are in a new org, trying to get all the relevant context for the team(s) you are supporting can be overwhelming. Years of Slack interactions. Slack now has AI summaries where you can select all messages in a channel from a certain period. Use it to get up-to-speed.
  4. GitHub Copilot (or equivalent) - Check your client’s AI-policy and use their LLM (most likely Github Copilot) to start to create your own context castle. You can start at the codebase but add other documents/pdfs/notes and start creating documentation to fact-check and build your knowledge every day. Fact-check aggressively with your client when in-doubt. Version control these, everything should live in GIT.
  5. NotebookLM - Use Google’s NotebookLM to ground an LLM in your own notes and documents. It’s an incredible tool for quickly synthesizing information from disparate sources and generating questions or summaries that help you prepare for client meetings.
  6. Mermaid.js - Use mermaid diagrams in markdown for your documentation. LLM’s can create beautifully flowing diagrams in mermaid format. High-level architecture, low-level application logic, flowcharts, GANTT charts for timelines etc. It’s extremely powerful.
  7. TLDR Data - Stay up to date in the data world, curated newsletter with short bites of what is happening at the bleeding edge and everywhere around it.

Hopefully this list helps you get started with creating your own curation of tools. Let me know if you have any questions or if you have any tools you would like to share.