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You should know the names of the people on your team. Ask for a CV or resume for each
person. Have regular conversations with at least one representative for every project—
minimally, you should talk to that person weekly. But if you really want a handle on how
your project is going, you, or someone in your team, should talk to someone from the out-
sourced team every day—the same as you would if they were in your office! (Luckily,
with instant messaging, it is very easy to keep in touch with a large team by adding them
all to a buddy list and spending time each day shooting messages to them.)

One effective way to make sure that you will get all of the information that you need to
run the project is to set up a communications plan with the team lead at the vendor. Make
it clear from the outset of the project exactly what information you need them to gather
for you. If you do this, it is very important that you only ask them to gather information
that will actually be useful to you, and that you use it and review it with them: if you do
not use the information that they gather (or if they do not see how it will be useful), then
it will just seem like busywork to the team, which is demoralizing and counterproductive.
If you don’t make sure that the people at the vendor know why you are asking for this
information and what you are using it for, it’s very easy to build up an environment of
distrust with your outsourcing vendor. The only way to combat that is with transparency.
In other words, somebody at the vendor is going to spend half a day each week gathering
data for you. Make sure that you respect that time.
The best possible scenario is when you’ve set up standards that let the people at the vendor
monitor themselves. You want the team to be as autonomous as possible, while still being
productive and giving you information that you need to monitor the project. Your goal
should be to have the team assist you in managing the project without losing control of it.
One way that you can do this is by setting up an inspection process where the team can
inspect documents and report the results to you (see below). If knowledge that you need to
know has been properly transferred, you can write a quiz, and have all of the people on the
team take it independently and send you their results. The key is that you must know at all
times what the team is doing, and that it’s in line with what you want them to do.

Share Information with Your Management

Many senior managers think that software development should be free. They think their
internal IS departments are overpaid. Now they’re cutting a big check to an outsourcing
company, and they expect everything to be smooth and easy; there should be no problems
or difficulties whatsoever. If you’re the project manager on a project in this environment,
you are set up for a thankless job.

When senior managers have unrealistic ideas about outsourcing, a project manager’s suc-
cesses will almost certainly go unrewarded because there is already an expectation that
outsourcing is easy. If you do well as the project manager, the credit will go to the out-
source company. What’s more, in an environment like this, there is little incentive not to
fail—if you do, it will be blamed on the outsourcing company. People are already biased
against outside organizations handling their business; nobody wants you to waste money,

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