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but they won’t blame you for somehow being “snowed” into thinking that another com-
pany could do as well as your own organization.

On the other hand, many senior managers have a much more realistic view of outsourced
projects. They realize that they are difficult to manage, and that they require a lot of work
and overhead. In this case, it is even more important that they are kept in the loop; you
will need them to support you in case you make any controversial decisions, if you need
further funding, or when you need their approval.

Regardless of the attitude of your senior management toward the project, it’s always a
good idea to keep them informed of everything you are doing. This means that you need
to constantly go back to your own senior management and make sure that you still have
their buy-in. If your boss thinks that managing an outsourced project is easy, you will
have a very difficult time explaining why you spend so much time managing it. You must
make sure your organization’s managers understand what it is that you and your out-
sourced team are accomplishing, and how you are dealing with them on a day-to-day
basis. You are the bridge between your organization and the vendor; it is your job to bring
transparency to the process. Just as you have to focus on constantly steering the vendor
team into meeting your organization’s goal, you also need to constantly steer your organi-
zation’s management so that you are always apprised of their goals and they have visibil-
ity into how the vendor is meeting those goals.
To provide adequate transparency into the project, you must give status reports to your
organization’s senior management. Any metrics that you use to track a software project
will be useful; you should make them available. Encourage your management to visit the
outsourced team and meet with the vendor’s management. All of the methods in
Chapter 10 for making a project transparent should be applied. In this way, you can make
sure that your management can actively get information whenever they need it—and you
can help them understand just how difficult the job of managing an outsourced project is.
A large part of establishing an understanding with your managers is sharing the issues that
you are resolving, so they understand the effort you are putting into your project—espe-
cially when it comes to managing the team. It may seem obvious to your senior managers
that the team doesn’t work for you, but it’s not obvious that this can create its own set of

problems. There’s a difference between being someone’s client and being someone’s boss.
You don’t set the performance goals of the software engineers; it is rare that you even
know what they accomplish in their careers.

Build a Relationship with the Vendor’s Management
You must have a good relationship with the entire upper management of your vendor
organization. You must know who to escalate to if things go wrong, and you need to be
able to trust them—and have them trust you as a credible and knowledgeable source of
information for your project. You have to partner with the management of your project at
the vendor company. They need to understand your goals. And most importantly, they
need to understand that when you ask them to change the way they do their work, you
are doing it to help them continue making money from your organization.

262 CHAPTER ELEVEN