The author, a consultant who has worked on projects in the education, training and professional regulation arena for more than three decades, reflects on factors that make for successful interventions and sustainable project outcomes. Seven key factors are identified: (1) intellectual credibility, both in a substantive and methodological sense; (2) a consistent and explicit ethical perspective; (3) developing a comprehensive rich picture of the practice context; (4) using a 'realisation' or 'co-creation' approach to ensure that the client community has ownership of the project; (5) the development of effective systems architecture; (6) being able to act as a constitutional arbiter to maintain consistency and constancy of purpose; and (7) treating the project as a research process, both internally to build in ongoing review and evolution and externally to provide critique and position it in relation to parallel developments in the field. The importance of methodological fluency is also emphasised to develop approaches that are contextually appropriate, while cautioning against the use of over-formalised methods and processes.