Why should you aspire to an independent consulting career as an information technology project manager?

Well, how about the combination of greater autonomy and more power to make things happen in a corporate IT project? The chance to increase your income by 50 percent, 100 percent or more? The opportunity to build your own just-in-time team of software subcontractors? Maybe the better question is: As a free-agent code jockey or an IT project manager stagnating in a staff position, why wouldn't you aspire to such a career change?

Who Wants a Consulting IT Project Manager, Anyway?

The demand for contract talent is strong at virtually every skill level, from data-entry clerks to project managers to chief technology officers. "Contractor placement is a candidate-driven market these days," says Scott Ream, president of Virtual Corp., a Flanders, New Jersey firm that supplies teams of consultants to Fortune 500 companies. "Quality people who have a tolerance for risk can do very well in the contracting market," Ream adds.

Norah Montalbano is one veteran consultant who long ago built a business based on the demand for IT project-management skills. As an employee of Lambda Technologies Inc., a New York City consulting firm, Montalbano found that "my clients kept telling me to go out on my own. They sought me out." She launched Integrated Solutions in 1984 with Citibank as her leading client and hasn't looked back. "Being a consultant has only been good for me," says Montalbano, who's based in New Hyde Park, New York.

What's the Work Like?

Bryan deSilva went off on his own about 15 years ago when he became fed up with corporate life. "The last real corporate job I had, I was finished with my job by about 11 o'clock every morning," he says. "When you're an employee, management doesn't want to hear" constructive criticism that might be welcome from outside consultants. DeSilva finds he's much more productive managing IT projects as an independent consultant specializing in enterprise software and running his own flexible team of subcontractors with his wife at their company, Improvisations, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Montalbano agrees. "When you're working as an employee, you're much more limited in what tasks you can take on," she says. "I'm able to operate at very different levels as a consultant. I've run projects where I had employees and consultants reporting to me." As a project manager, Montalbano has helped Citibank choose software from multiple vendors and integrate it into a unified architecture for an Internet project.

How Good Is the Money?

Money was also a major motivator for deSilva, whose clients include Siemens Corp. and 20th Century Fox. While a typical in-house project manager might make an annual salary of $100,000 to $150,000, he says that same talent might be worth $150 an hour on the consulting market. Assuming 1,850 billable hours per year, that translates to a gross income of more than $275,000. Montalbano cites similar figures, though she puts the typical salary range for project managers lower, at $80,000 to $130,000.

Project-Contracting Caveats

Of course, with the larger rewards of independent project-management work come greater responsibilities and risks, especially if you manage your own subcontractors or employees. "If the consultant is not prepared to take a serious approach to having his or her own business -- legal, tax, payroll, etc. -- then they shouldn't do it," cautions Ream, whose firm provides those services.

To command the highest rates and perhaps even earn a percentage of the revenues associated with a project, you must take responsibility for deliverables, not just for showing up and putting in hours. And if you don't deliver, you may not get paid at all, Ream says. In the IT world, where failed development efforts are commonplace, that's a real possibility and a risk that you need to manage as carefully as a complex technology project.