Appendices

Appendix A: Glossary of Common Consulting Role Terms

• Account leader: The person responsible for the overall client relationship, growth, and senior stakeholder coverage for a major account.
• Analyst: Entry-level consultant focused on analysis, research, and producing structured work products with close supervision.
• Associate: A consulting level that can mean entry-level at some firms and post-graduate/post-MBA at others; always validated by responsibilities.
• Associate Partner: Partner-in-development level with meaningful commercial responsibility and leadership across multiple engagements.
• Case team: The project team assigned to deliver a specific client engagement.
• Chargeability: The portion of time billed to client work (or counted as client-delivery time) versus internal activities.
• Client-facing: A role that regularly interacts with client stakeholders as part of delivery or selling.
• Commercial leadership: Responsibility for originating work, building pipeline, and closing opportunities, not just delivering.
• Consultant: A mid-level consulting role in many firms, but an entry-level role in some; always anchored on scope and autonomy.
• Delivery lead: The person accountable for day-to-day execution, timelines, governance, and outcomes on a program.
• Director: A senior role that can be partner-track (common in many Big 4 member firms) or a senior non-partner leadership band in other firms.
• Engagement: A defined piece of client work with scope, team, timeline, and deliverables.
• Engagement Manager: The day-to-day project leader responsible for team performance, delivery quality, and client management.
• Engagement economics: How the project makes money, including fees, staffing mix, utilization, and margin.
• Expert: A client-facing specialist role where primary value comes from deep domain knowledge rather than generalist breadth.
• Expert track: A career path designed for specialists, often with partner-equivalent endpoints for domain leaders.
• Functional specialist: A specialist aligned to a function (e.g., pricing, procurement, risk, org, data) rather than a generalist.
• Industry specialist: A specialist aligned to an industry (e.g., healthcare, energy, FS) with deep sector context and credibility.
• Implementation: Work focused on turning recommendations into sustained operating results, often requiring change management and governance.
• Manager: A project leadership level responsible for delivery management and increasingly commercial and people responsibilities.
• Managing Director: A senior leadership band in many firms, often partner-equivalent in scope; equity status varies by firm.
• Module: A discrete workstream or component of an engagement owned by an individual contributor or workstream lead.
• Operating model: The set of structures, processes, governance, decision rights, and capabilities that define how an organization runs.
• Partner: A senior relationship and growth owner accountable for origination, delivery oversight, and practice leadership.
• Partner-track: A progression path where the role is explicitly moving toward partnership/ownership-level responsibility.
• PMO: Program Management Office; the governance, planning, reporting, and decision cadence engine for complex programs.
• Principal: A senior client leader band that is often partner-in-development, though meaning varies by firm.
• Practice: An internal organizing unit for expertise (industry or function) responsible for capability building and go-to-market.
• Practice management: Non-client-facing roles that run the business of a practice, such as operations, staffing, enablement, and knowledge.
• Project Leader: The BCG term commonly equivalent to Engagement Manager/Manager at other strategy firms.
• Proposal: A document and process used to win client work; often includes approach, team, timeline, and pricing.
• Pursuit: The coordinated process to win work, including qualification, solutioning, proposal development, and negotiation.
• Senior Associate: A band that can mean “experienced pre-manager” in some firms and regions; validate scope and leadership.
• Senior Partner: A top leadership band for long-tenured partners with major client portfolios and practice/firm leadership.
• Staffing: The process of assigning consultants to engagements, balancing demand, skills, utilization, and development.
• Value case: A quantified rationale for a transformation or initiative, linking actions to financial and operational outcomes.
• Workstream: A structured set of tasks and deliverables within an engagement, typically led by a consultant or manager.

Appendix B: Common Abbreviations and Internal Jargon by Firm

McKinsey

• BA: Business Analyst (entry level).
• EM: Engagement Manager.
• AP: Associate Partner.
• CCS: Core Client Service (generalist consulting population).
• Expert / KE: Expert / Knowledge Expert (specialist content roles, naming varies by practice).
• PD: Professional Development (staffing and career management function).

Bain

• AC: Associate Consultant.
• SAC: Senior Associate Consultant.
• AIS: AI, Insights & Solutions (digital and analytics talent ecosystem).
• PPK: Product, Practice & Knowledge (practice and knowledge organization).
• Due diligence: Short-cycle private equity diligence work, often referred to as “DD.”

BCG

• PL: Project Leader.
• MDP: Managing Director & Partner.
• MDSP: Managing Director & Senior Partner.
• BCG X: Digital, tech, data, design, and build capabilities under a unified brand.
• Platinion: Technology and architecture consulting unit (often “BCG Platinion”).
• Vantage: Expertise/insights and knowledge delivery unit (“BCG Vantage”).

Deloitte

• SC: Senior Consultant.
• SM: Senior Manager.
• SL: Specialist Leader (specialist track in some markets).
• SM (Specialist Master): Specialist Master (role name collision with Senior Manager; always clarify context).
• Offering: A packaged solution area; often the internal label for sub-practices.

EY and EY-Parthenon

• EYP: EY-Parthenon (strategy consulting brand within EY).
• ED: Executive Director (senior leadership band in some markets).
• SaT: Strategy and Transactions (service line label in many markets).
• GDS: Global Delivery Services (delivery hubs and shared-service capability).

PwC and Strategy&

• S&: Strategy& (PwC’s strategy consulting business).
• SA: Senior Associate (often the band below Manager).
• IFS: Internal Firm Services (back-office functions in many territories).
• Deals: Transaction and deal advisory services umbrella term.

Kearney

• BA: Business Analyst.
• Ignite: Innovation and customer growth-focused capability unit in many markets.
• O&P: Operations & Performance (common practice naming pattern).

Accenture

• MD: Managing Director.
• SMD: Senior Managing Director.
• ML: Management Level (internal level taxonomy often referenced in postings).
• Song: Accenture Song (experience, design, marketing, and digital product delivery).

Oliver Wyman

• EM: Engagement Manager.
• OWA: Oliver Wyman Actuarial (specialist practice label).
• Vector: Technical/engineering-oriented specialty business within Oliver Wyman in some domains.

L.E.K.

• AC: Associate Consultant (mid-level in L.E.K. ladder).
• Solutions Team: Umbrella for knowledge, market insights, and analytics support functions.
• Expert Platform: External expert network used for primary research interviews and surveys.

Arthur D. Little

• ADL: Arthur D. Little (firm abbreviation).
• MP: Managing Partner (office or practice leadership title).

Roland Berger

• PM: Project Manager (common engagement leader band).
• RB Digital: Digital and data capability label used in some markets.

KPMG

• Lighthouse: Data and AI capability network within KPMG in many markets.
• Ignition: Client innovation and co-creation center concept in some markets.
• QRM: Quality & Risk Management (risk/compliance function label in many firms).

Capgemini Invent

• Invent: Capgemini Invent (strategy and transformation consulting brand within Capgemini).
• VP/SVP/EVP: Senior leadership bands that may be partner-equivalent in responsibility.

Booz Allen Hamilton

• VP/SVP/EVP: Senior corporate-style consulting leadership bands.
• SEA: Senior Executive Advisor (advisor designation in some contexts).

Alvarez & Marsal

• A&M: Alvarez & Marsal.
• MD: Managing Director (top client leader band).
• PI: Performance Improvement (common practice label).

Mercer

• H&B: Health & Benefits.
• OCIO: Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (investment management model).
• DB/DC: Defined Benefit / Defined Contribution (retirement plan types).

OC&C

• RLT: Retail, Leisure & Tourism (practice label in some markets).
• Analytics track: Client-facing analytics career path alongside strategy consulting.

BearingPoint

• BU: Business Unit (often Consulting, Products, and Capital in BearingPoint’s structure).
• KM: Knowledge Management.

FTI Consulting

• MD/SMD: Managing Director / Senior Managing Director (senior client leadership bands).
• EC: Economic Consulting (business segment label).
• FLC: Forensic & Litigation Consulting (business segment label).

IBM Consulting

• MC/SMC: Managing Consultant / Senior Managing Consultant (project leadership bands).
• AP: Associate Partner.
• GPM: Global Practice Model or Global Practice leadership shorthand used in some internal contexts.