This document outlines how to evaluate your project’s potential for outsourcing, and describes the factors that help determine outsourcing’s pros and cons as a project development option, analyses on its cost-benefit and risks, and other requirements under it. These items are in addition to other factors that you may wish to include.
Outsourcing your software development project is risky, but it can be a cost-effective business move if you select your outsourcing partners very carefully. Use this checklist of criteria to evaluate a candidate vendor's reputation, stability, capability, cost and overall ability to deliver.
Document and analyze what effect outsourcing might have on your project.
Find greater profits using offshore outsourcing, and use this project plan to make sure it's done right--and on time.
Planning to hire some temporary help? An agency is often your best bet, as long as you have an agreement that outlines how the relationship will work.
This template is designed to assist the project manager to improve the value of the project workforce (the "Return to Project Manager") by reducing costs and increasing factors that increase the value of the workforce. The tasks generated using this organizer are to be used in the Planning stage of the project.
Use this checklist to give a potential buyer of outsourcing services a clearer picture of what to expect from a provider. Each of these checklist items is a great conversation starter. Use them to uncover potential weaknesses that might cause difficulty later.
Are you signing a contract to outsource a software development project to a vendor? Ask these questions to make sure you know what you're getting and are getting what you are paying for.
Sooner or later, your company will have work with consultants and professional services providers. This sample contract can give you guidelines about the kinds of matters you must make legal provision for when outsourcing work to people and companies outside your corporation. To avoid nasty legal misunderstandings, however, we advise you to have your own legal department or lawyer review this or any contract you make between your company and an outside service provider or consultant. (Our lawyers made us say that!)
Our yearly look at the state of IT, collected from various industry surveys. We'll take a look at everything from outsourcing and budgets to IT's move toward something greener.
Hop on the path to increased profitibility with this presentation, designed to make your offshore decision easier.
A new global survey indicates that many outsourced projects are jeopardized by poor risk management. Pervasive challenges include a lack of foundational skills and processes, requirements gaps, and vendor delays.
To outsource various types of functions (including software development/maintenance, data center and network operations, backup/recovery services, data storage management services, system administration services, etc.), you need to conduct a broad assessment of the capabilities of an outsourcing services provider. Use this outline as your guide.
Estimating resources on a project, be it people, equipment or materials, can often be a difficult challenge for a project manager. The purpose of this template is to allow the project manager to identify, document and estimate the specific resource needs of the project along with detailing how those resources will be managed.
All too often, outsourcing is equated to offshore outsourcing. But it spans a much broader spectrum and includes any work or service performed by third parties for a company. So let’s look at outsourcing from both sides of the aisle, and explore the trade-offs. In doing so, a framework will be developed that you might find useful in evaluating the extent to which outsourcing is appropriate for your IT organization.
What are the security issues that keep CIOs and CSOs up at night? They look a lot like outsourcing and securing remote data. Really, it all comes down to three things: compliance, compliance, compliance.
In this outsourcing roundup, we’ve concentrated on a few of the priorities that outsourcing’s major players are going to be focusing on next year.
Organizations are taking a hard look at their outsourcing strategies, looking at what worked in the past and, more importantly, what’s needed in this current cost-cutting environment and for the future as well. Practically speaking, the most prudent strategies are elastic, short-term remedies that can be changed on a dime when the economy improves and shifts into overdrive.
The general consensus is that the economy is turning around. How will that affect the IT career marketplace, and where will we first start to see the relief?
A new survey finds that more software development professionals and executives see IT budgets increasing, but project scope and estimation are still concerns.
It seems like jobs in the United States have been moving offshore at an alarming pace, and many U.S. workers fear losing their jobs to even more outsourcing in the next year. Here's a look at the actual numbers and what they mean for U.S. workers and businesses.
Outsourcing can come in many forms, and it is important to understand which type of outsourcing that maximizes the risk-value balance before selecting an approach.
Ask outsourcing consultants and vendors what outsourcing solutions are viable now and for the future, and you’ll get a battery of answers. Who is right, who is wrong?
Are agile methods really as innocent as they appear, or really just a cover for some dodgy dealings? This exposé blows the lid off agile’s real motives.
Anyone who has been a project manager for a while will have run into an organizational change management project--and has likely experienced some of the unique challenges that they present. We all know that there is no such thing as an easy project, but making fundamental changes to the company or department in which we work presents a whole new set of potential pitfalls. Successful organizational change management needs careful planning and execution--and here we help you prepare for this tricky time.
A recently published study says that the IT outsourcing landscape is changing in surprising ways.
There are some hard questions to ask before you outsource. If you are serious about the whole idea, what are the key questions you need to ask to be able to sleep confidently at night knowing that you’ve made the right decision?
Outsourced initiatives need a somewhat different approach to project management to maximize the chance of success.
The project manager’s critical success factor will be leadership skills, according to a global panel of consultants and senior executives assembled by ESI International.
The success of an outsourcing project, perhaps more so than in any other kind of project, is heavily dependent on the contract encouraging the right kind of cooperative and service execution behaviors.
To understand smartsourcing, it’s a good idea to back up and look at how outsourcing has evolved over the past 50 years. Then we’ll go on to explain the difference between outsourcing, offshoring, insourcing, nearsourcing and smartsourcing.
The following recommendations will help keep quality management in mind before the company contracts with a supplier for services.
In managing IT outsourcing projects, consider five variables and a group of trends that will strongly affect your project decisions.
This article will outline how to plan for implicit costs of outsourcing so you can plan and budget accordingly for the next fiscal year.
How an IT outsourcing services provider called on its Russian “connections,” innovative project management techniques and a bit of old-fashioned code detangling to help a Boston software company fix a slower-than-ideal program in record time.
Sourcing is a holistic strategy that defines how an organization sources a unit of work. Different pieces of work can be sourced in different ways, and there are a variety of criteria that can be used to make that sourcing choice. This article covers those criteria, and defines some of the key sourcing terms that have been thrown around the industry.
Getting the decision on whether or not to outsource right, and managing arrangements effectively, can be a chore...read on for some advice.
In the 21st century, the greatest advances will come from fueling innovation and reducing the cost of production by moving work to where the workers are. This is the foundation of the movement from first-generation outsourcing and second-generation smartsourcing. Outsourcing was about reducing cost. Smartsourcing is about leveraging competencies of organizations, partners and suppliers to achieve a significant increase in total innovative capacity.
IT applications have been killing organizations since the beginning. For many reasons, IT applications create problems that are becoming more serious due to the increased role that IT is playing in day-to-day operations. Here's how to stay alive...
The state of the CIO is stagnant, according to the latest industry surveys. We've taken a look at what they say and boiled them down to the essential message for CIOs: align or die.
Organizations will rely more on project management as the "need to perform trumps survival in 2010," according to a panel of senior executives and consultants.
Take a look at recent news through the eyes of a seasoned project manager.
Reaching out to become part of the latest trend can stretch a company to the breaking point. That's what happened to Hank Byrne's organization when they tried to grab the brass ring in PM consulting services.
Offshore outsourcing is no longer an experimental option. It’s the direction of the industry and it makes business sense to execute it the right way. This two-part article serves as a guideline for IT managers planning to move development offshore, and the issues discussed are from an outsourcer’s perspective.
There are good reasons why an organization should choose outsourcing options. It is to be considered carefully, however, just as if you were hiring a new block of staff through your own human resource department.
In examining trends in the outsourcing industry earlier in the year, a recent study identified five accelerators influencing the growth of global IT offshoring.
Several advantages are cited by U.S. and European companies that outsource to Russian software developers.
Recent alliances, acquisitions and implementations in the world of project and portfolio management.
How do you change “Us vs. Them” to “All for One”? After the contracts are signed, you are left to achieve the great benefits of outsourcing in your project. Use these lessons learned to avoid typical constraints and annoyances.
Runaway costs are pretty easy to spot--but reducing them is another story. In this review, a book with a number of components that make it a reference or every IT manager is examined.
