Wednesday October 14, 2009

Insurance for Outsourcing I came across this article on outsourcing which is interesting in itself, but spiced up somewhat by worthy comments in particular by David Patterson(author of one of my favorite Computing texts).

Many of the customer hosted/requested Rational Process based facilitation I have run were set in a context of some type of outsourcing (though in contrast to the theme of the article above, the outsourcing was in country rather than off-shore). Also sprinkled into the mix were multiple vendors and a number of internal customer departments and the all important "the business".

We may have to look elsewhere such as ITIL or the business model around the outsourcing contract was set up in order to prevent issues upfront. Once a problem has occurred and progress has stalled, Rational Process has been every effective at

• Focusing all the parties on what the problems that needed solving really were and which one to work on 1st
• What was a guess, what was fact and what data is missing and needs to be collected
• What assumptions have been made and what data would turn the assumptions into facts
• What possible causes make no sense at all to consider further
• What the most probable cause is
• Risks involved in proving (or otherwise) the most probable cause

Discussing the merits or otherwise of outsourcing will be left to others. A Rational Process capability and a clear understanding of when to deploy, is effective insurance against finger pointing and stalled progress in any situation where operational responsibilities have been transfered away from the primary customer, be they internal to the organization or to other parties.

Clive

(2009-10-14 12:23:19.0) Permalink