Living Up To The Contract

The first step of any project to outsource project development is to put out a “Request for Proposal” or an RFP. This document is the groundwork for what you are going to outsource and what you will expect those applying for the job of being your contract labor to do. It will also be the basis for the cost evaluation they give to you and the justification for the expense they expect to assign to this project.

The quality of the proposals you get will depend entirely on the quality of the RFP. You must give the candidates for the outsourcing work sufficient detail to work with so they can come back with a quality proposal that addresses the need of the software problem and includes a comprehensive solution. That contracting company wants to put a proposal in front of you that is complete, demonstrates that they can do a complete job for you and still is competitive with others who will be competing for the work.

If you get proposals back from the release of the RFP that vary widely in price and detail, that may reflect that you did not give the candidates for the job sufficient detail to give you well thought out bids. A good software development company may submit a bid on a poorly written RFP but they will “pad it” so there is sufficient costs to cover any parts of the project that are ambiguous in the RFP.

This back and forth process of reviewing the proposals and narrowing down the candidates can take some time. But by the time you have the crème of the crop selected and finally eliminate the rest of the candidates so you have chosen the best contractor to do the job, your project will have already undergone significant development and you should be in good shape to start the discussions with the selected agency to perform the work in the context an outsourcing agreement.

In order to come out of the contract discussions with a document that will be the foundation of a successful outsourced project, that contract must be specific in terms of costs and schedules. The project schedule should break down into milestones and tasks that support milestones in sufficient detail that you can track the progress of the project on a weekly basis. The use of a good project management tool like Microsoft Project is a great management resource for making sure your outsourcing contractor is on track with the project you have assigned to them as well.

Just as the schedule should be broken down into milestones and tasks so you, the project sponsor, can monitor the progress on a weekly basis, the price tag that is submitted to you should be broken down in sufficient detail so you know what is being offered for that price. For example, if that cost gives you the use of five analyst programmers for three months, it must be stipulated that the entire project goals will be accomplished with that resource and if there is a need for more developers, that is the responsibility of the contractor, not you. The cost should also break out the use of contractor resources such as development and test environments, travel and accommodations for consultation and any associated costs.

If that budget is well documented, you will be able to determine in some detail if the contractor knows well in advance what it will take to do the job and that they have everything documented that will represent a cost. This will head off any appeals that could come in after the project is launched on the excuse of an “unanticipated cost” which would run your bill up.

By the time you and the company to whom you are outsourcing the development sign that contract, you will have a working document giving you a rich detail of not only how much the project will cost and when it will be completed but the inner workings of how the contractor will accomplish that goal. You can then make the contracting company live up to that contract because you were way ahead of any appeal that issues or costs came up that were not anticipated in the contract. In that way, you keep control and get the work done in the time frame and at the price that you agreed to in the first place.