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Managing the Outsourced Project
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
Congratulations! You have just been appointed as the manager of a major new project. The company has been researching how to best execute the initiative for some time and has now found the perfect outsourcing partner to assist. As PM, you are the interface with the outsourcing partner--success is up to you. So now what?
Managing outsourced projects requires a different style and approach to be successful, but let’s not lose sight of the fundamental project structure. The project is still going to go through the project lifecycle, and there will still be regular review points--major milestones with decisions and approvals--and there will still be the usual plethora of risks, issues and change requests. The difference with outsourced projects is not in the “what” of project management, but rather the “how”.
Understanding the complexities
The first thing to bear in mind is that the project likely has an additional key document: the contract. In an ideal world, the project manager is involved in drafting the contract details, but even if they haven’t been they are still very interested in what it contains. The contract--and particularly the statement of work that it should contain--will go a long way toward identifying specifically what functions the third party is going to complete, and just as importantly what they aren&rsquo…
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