Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
Outsourcing presents a unique problem of deciding between giving up control of a project, and potentially maximizing the efficiency of it.
When outsourcing a project, what are the important considerations?
From webmasterworld member comments, it seems like the most common areas for outsourcing are:
What specifications are necessary for a contractor to provide the best service to you as the client?
Design
Development
Promotion
Obviously the more specifics that can be provided for a contractor, the more likely they are to get the project right the first time. Without going into a discussion of NDA's and their impact (probably a great discussion for another thread), what is the most specific instructions you can provide a contractor with in regards to the above areas? From a contractor's perspective, what questions do you ask of your clients to ease your learning curve/work load?
Example Specsheet:
Project: Promotion - Link Development
Links must be:
-US-based
-On "theme" to industry X
-1 way links – PR4 and above
-Less than 40 Links on the page linking to us
-Will consider recip. Links for pr6 and above
-Will consider purchasing directory listings of “high value”
Full documentation will be necessary for:
-Site submitted to:
-Date submitted
-Date Verified
The payment will be X for each verified link, or y for z submissions.
I'm presenting many questions here, but examples of spec sheets (generalized to the three areas), and potential ideas to improve them will hopefully bring out a discussion that can maximize the efficiency between contractors and contractees.
The company sent out an EOI (Expression of Interest) in which we had to respond stating our previous experience. They narrowed this list down to 3 (from about 10). Those 3 were then asked to respond to a RFT (Request for Tender).
In the Tender document, the company stated the bare minimums that they wanted. i.e 24 x 7 support on all key routers, 24 x 5 help desk with call tracking etc.
What they didn't do - which I feel is a good thing - was get into too much detail in the RFT stage. They wanted to make sure that the companies responding were invovative in the way they did things to ensure that they were always going to be seeking constant improvements in efficencies.
So whilst it is important to set the scope of your outsourcing, part of the reason you may be outsourcing is because you are not an expert. You may need to leave a little bit of lattitude for the experts to be able to do their job properly.
That is what the due-dilegence part of any (major) outsourcing contract is for - to nut out the finer points including the total scope (in scope and out of scope), the Service Leval agreements, the costs and the penalties.
Like I said, this was for a major contract (several million over the course of 3 years). I am not so sure it is worth the amount of effort for a small outsourcing agreement i.e. link development.
I am wondering more in regards to an individual web entrepreneur though, specifically for web-related jobs. How can the communication between a contractor, and individual web professional (essentially the project manager) be improved?
What information is most valuable (or holds any value) to a contractor for making a project most efficient?
