How to manage small Outsourcing Projects

Outsourcing and Project management go hand-in-hand, however project management often involves a lot of paperwork and operating cost and as a reason many people try to avoid it for small outsourced projects.

It’s mostly assumed that small outsourced project doesn’t demand the same management procedures that a large outsourced project does. And in some sense, that appears to be right also. A small outsourced project will certainly benefit from some type of management. It just doesn’t need the same type of management like a large outsourced project. But it’s wrong to think that because of the small size of a project, it can be discarded. Completely eliminating project management will surely invite a total mess.

There are certain ways through which small outsourced projects can be managed more effectively:

• Efficient Planning: Just because an outsourced project is small, that does not provides any reason to assume that its development doesn’t need any planning at all. Plans will be required to be worked out for required tasks, estimate, how long those tasks will take, planning to work out how many outsourcing service providers would be required, and then to assign those tasks to the appropriate service providers.
• Less of Documentations and more focus on Delivery: One of the arguments against using project management methodologies in outsourcing is that they’re very process-oriented, resulting in vast quantities of documentation that aren’t practical. It’s a valid argument, and any method which focuses on producing documentation at the expense of delivering, the desired results are bound to be a difficult. After all, project management is supposed to deliver objectives, not detailed pages of documentatations.
• Define Deliverable: Documenting deliverables helps to communicate what has to be expected from the service providers while working on the project. It doesn’t matter if the documentation takes up no more than a page of text, they’re important and they need to be present. Without them, people might interpret them in unexpected ways which will create more work in an effort to correct mistakes.
• That gives way to an important question: How much documentation is really necessary? The short answer to this can be: as much as that is required by the project. If documentation helps deliver business objectives, then it should be produced. If not, then too much time should not be wasted on it.
• Communicating and Tracking of the Progress: Even small projects need diligent communication. It can’t be assumed that another person will know what they’re supposed to do without tasks being effectively communicated. Tracking and reporting progress will help to ensure communication. Even a short daily email message detailing the work completed, work still left to do, and a list of any issues/problems are very much enough.
• Adjust to Changes Quickly: For a small project, there shouldn’t be any need for imaginative change management. A quick discussion should be sufficient enough provided you can quickly work out the impact on a project’s cost and schedule. Just try to avoid ‘scope creep’ where the project grows bigger and bigger as more and more changes are added. A project that’s subject to scope creep never gets completed.
• Handle Risks adequately: Failing to properly manage risk is one the main causes for projects to fail. There will be risks even on a small project. Most can be prevented by thinking through all the potential risks at the beginning of the project, and then planning how to deal with them when/if encountered. Fortunately, the overhead in managing risks is very low. It can take you a little over a couple of hours to properly manage risks for a small outsourced project, and half an hour to review all the risks and think of new ones.

All these point when efficiently and regularly followed while handling smaller outsourced projects can surely help in managing projects in a better and successful manner.

About Author:

Prabhakar Ranjan works with Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd.  He is part of the consulting team that delivers Vendor Management Office projects. He can be contacted at prabhakar.r@spluspl.com