Building blocks for a successful multi vendor project

Image CC BY-ND 2.0, wespeck, Flickr

This has been earlier published in Medium

Think about a team and challenges it might encounter when developing a great new product. Then multiply the size of those challenges by ten, add bureaucracy, misunderstandings and corporate liabilities to the mix. Execcuting a successful project in a multi vendor environment isn’t an easy task.

I have been helping customers with enterprise integration needs for some time and have seen multitude of obstacles that working with multiple vendors can cause. These include for example miscommunication, incomplete deliverables that are late and also unclear objectives. All these lead to wasted working hours, pending deadlines and common frustration. Not to mention exceeded budgets.

Making things work is all about people and how they cooperate for a common goal. That one sentence sums it all up: People, cooperation, a goal.

To make those blend here is some advice.

Communicate, clearly

Cooperation is about communication and how well you express yourself. Poor communication in a project leads misconceptions and wasted working hours.

Paint a picture

A picture tells more than a thousands words. A clear architecture diagram tells more than hundred pages of written specification. I use diagrams and pictures to explain my point of view of projects. Usually it is easier to discuss about complex things whit simple diagrams.

Resource across vendors

Vendors have different kind of resources and timetables. Coordinate and manage resourcing according to project schedule to provide all needed expertise on right moments. Talk with your vendors and discuss how they can best provide resources to your needs.

Know starting point and the target

Project needs a goal and a platform to takeoff. A project is a path from point A to point B and you can’t draw that line without them. Define these before a project to give it a change to succeed. That target can change in an agile way during a project if it seems to be leading you to a wrong outcome.