Managing Outsourcing Projects and Vendors

by Ed Yourdon

Corporate IT managers who become involved in outsourcing projects, and work with outsourcing vendors, come to the same realization sooner or later: only 10%-20% of what they do has anything to do with software and technology. Whether they like it or not, 80%-90% of what they do involves contract negotiation, contract administration, and the legal aspects of a relationship that can often become downright adversarial. Unfortunately, most of us were never trained in these areas. Instead, we learned software engineering methodologies for higher-quality technical designs, and then we learned how to draw Gantt charts to keep track of the activities going on within a project.