Discussion on software outsourcing project management

Outsourcing is a management mode for enterprises to take advantage of external professional resources for services, so as to reduce costs, improve efficiency, give full play to their core competitiveness, and even enhance their own response capabilities, it is also a very important business model in modern society. However, outsourcing also has certain risks: Outsourcing quality is difficult to guarantee, outsourcing management requires more resources, enterprise information leakage, and reduced system flexibility. As the outsourcers instinctively tend to control costs to increase their profits, it is necessary for the entrusting party and the contractor to reach a consensus on outsourcing management specifications to effectively manage the entire outsourcing process, so that both parties can benefit from the same purpose, in this case, the benefits can be maximized.
At the project initiation stage, the product owner should make "Make or buy decisions" to determine which parts of the products to be developed should be "purchased", "outsourced development", or "self-developed ". Non-core services should be outsourced as much as possible, and core services should be done by themselves, because the core services determine the product quality and have certain confidentiality, causing a high risk of outsourcing.
When selecting an external store, the service price cannot be used as the final decision. The enterprise should decide the service price according to its own requirements on software quality. The outsourcers should evaluate their technical capabilities, domain knowledge depth, corporate culture, whether similar systems, development platforms, and environments have been developed before, during the evaluation, you must also be aware of the risks that may arise from outsourcing and effectively manage risks.
Outsourcing is divided into two types: partial outsourcing and overall outsourcing. The management method of the former is similar to the internal software development management method of the enterprise, and the risk is also relatively small; the latter needs to know whether it can provide quality specifications, whether the quality standards and test data required by the outsourcers can be provided, and whether the outsourcers have development platforms and environments similar to the enterprises themselves, and whether the level of external technical resources is consistent with the technical indexes required for internal enterprise development, which is highly risky. Determining the outsourcing business model suitable for your enterprise is a prerequisite for Avoiding Risks and implementing project outsourcing.
When selecting outsourcing, enterprises should fully understand their projects, including project requirements, implementation methods, and expected sources of economic benefits.
When selecting an external store, we adopt a divide-and-conquer approach to allocate a large outsourcing project to several vendors rather than one vendor. In this way, each vendor can take advantage of its own expertise to undertake outsourcing projects suitable for itself and reduce risks. At the same time, the Division and governance of multiple manufacturers can also cause checks and balances between various manufacturers, to avoid delays in outsourcing projects.
When an outsourcing contract is signed, enterprises should provide complete software system specifications, establish quality indicators and test procedures, and strive to establish a good cooperation model, the establishment of such a cooperation model often determines the success or failure of outsourcing. Before the contract is signed and the project starts, both parties should reach a clear consensus on the scope of work of the project. Otherwise, there will be many unclear points during project implementation, there will be a lot of trouble during acceptance because the scope of the project is different. When the contract is signed, the confirmation and review time of each milestone in outsourcing should be flexible. Otherwise, after several deferred confirmation reviews, the actual progress of the project has been significantly different from the requirements stipulated in the original contract.
During project outsourcing, risk management mechanisms should be established, including preparing risk management plans, identifying possible risks, analyzing the causes of risks, and formulating corresponding countermeasures, establish a sound risk monitoring and control mechanism to reduce the side effects of risks, turn risks into opportunities, and strive to maximize profits.
Contract management teams should also be established during project outsourcing. Contract and service managers of suppliers, as well as contract managers of the company, should be involved to form an arch-shaped control team. This department is independent, supervises whether the project is implemented in accordance with the contract requirements, and proposes the defects and correction schemes in the project implementation. This group can serve as a bridge between enterprises and external companies to eliminate inconsistency of understanding.