Use these ten tips from PM Planet columnist Rob England to get maximum results from your project management service provider.
If you are considering outsourcing the management of an IT project to a service provider, there are four key things to look for in a project management service provider: a strong project management office (PMO), certified project managers (PM), experience and strength.
A strong PMO should:
Set standards: methodologies, reporting, documentation, templates, etc.
Collect knowledge: industry best practice, in-house expertise, feedback from projects, etc.
Package and distribute that knowledge: libraries, samples, starter packs (By “starter pack” I mean that a PM goes to the PMO and describes their project, and the PMO builds a first cut of project plan, agendas, documentation and reports).
Train, coach and mentor PMs.
Demand and collate progress reports, and escalate projects outside bounds.
Manage the portfolio of current and upcoming projects, to ensure they can be and are properly resourced.
Have your PMO or an in-house PM visit their PMO and discuss all these questions with them. The head of their PMO should be among those who present to you as they chase the deal: meet the boffins (i.e., the experts) as well as the salespeople.
Look for certificated PMs with experience and references. Make sure the PMs you assess are the ones you are going to get. Don’t fall for the old “reserve the right to substitute …” bait-and-switch trick. Insist the vendor provides details of all potential staff.
Especially look for relevant experience with the methodologies you use and, if possible, your organization, i.e., people who have worked with you before are more effective and efficient. Also look for experience with the technologies (programming languages, databases, middleware, user interface … ) and methodologies or bodies of knowledge (RUP, CMM, ITIL …) you will be asking your service provider’s staff to work with.
If their knowledge management is good, then it is OK if the proposed people do not have this experience so long as their organization does. In that case, you need to be confident that the PMO is effective enough to transfer that knowledge.
Make sure they have the resources to service your project with plenty of headroom to spare. A small company might have great intellectual property but if they sign one large customer during your project you are in trouble. Even if they schedule the next project to follow yours, you will have difficulties if your project runs over or if problems show up later or if you want them back for later phases, etc., etc.
Also, make sure they can support your project in all geographical locations it will be rolled out to. This way if a key member of your service provider’s team leaves, you will be covered.
Once you have selected a service provider, use these ten tips to get maximum results:
1. Be an open partner. Remember, you are not competitors. Even though they may be competitive sellers of their services, they are not competing with you (or shouldn’t be). They compete with other service providers and you are the terrain for which they compete. They need you to succeed for them to win. So don’t be deceptive or tricky, especially once engaged. Their sales people may be as dodgy as any, but their delivery people seldom are. They are on your side.
2. Look for the mutually beneficial outcomes. All healthy service engagements are a win-win. This means you should seek to get what you require, but you must also seek to ensure they do too. They have a right to a profit, and their staff have a right to a normal life.
3. Create good channels for communication. Do this at multiple levels between your organizations, including defined mechanisms for escalation of problems. Your and their executive officers should communicate. This can be informal and occasional, but it should happen. The seniority will depend on the importance of the project.
Your project owner and their PM should meet very regularly, say weekly or even daily. Stakeholders should attend decision-making meetings. Your subject-matter-experts and their implementers must also get together regularly to ensure requirements are expressed directly, not via people who don’t understand.
It is not enough to promise regular meetings—ensure they happen. Have a process to monitor, and to escalate if they don’t. This is especially important where you have outsourced the whole project, not just the project management component. In the latter case, your own staff are presumably engaged on a day-to-day basis and will hopefully report and escalate internally.
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