Project Sponsor Managing IT Services Providers

In this post, we’ll look at the experiences of a colleague of mine managing two IT Services contractors as part of a major infrastructure upgrade. We’ll also look at the steps you can take to ensure IT Services contractors involved in your project deliver everything you need, when you need it to implement a successful result.

The Situation

This U.S based financial services firm acquired content management software a number of years ago to manage the content in their Web sites and Web based applications. With the competitive pressures to enhance and expand their Web offerings, the company ignored the vendor’s periodic upgrades to the content management software until they found their version was no longer supported. Not an ideal situation for mission-critical services!

The Goal

The company immediately launched a project to upgrade the content management software to the current version and migrate all content to the new platform. To keep the focus on the task at hand, accelerate delivery and reduce risk, no application or content changes would be made until after the new version was implemented and operated successfully in production for a six week proving period. The change was expected to cost $600,000 and take six months to complete.

The Project

This organization outsourced the maintenance of their desktop devices and servers to two different contractors – one looked after the client side, the other managed the server infrastructure. Because the content management software upgrade involved both client and server components, both contractors were engaged to manage the changes to their respective platforms. An internal team was formed to plan and manage the overall project and migrate the content to the new environment. The project was headed by my colleague, a great PM with a terrific track record of project successes under his belt.

The Results

The project was delivered successfully, but five months late and sixty percent over the original estimate. The vast majority of the overrun came from the contractors’ failure to deliver. Some examples:

On the server side:

  1. The contractor took 4 months to get the statement of work to the point where their PM’s could be assigned to the project.
  2. The contractor’s Tier 1 support staff was not involved in the initiation phase and was not privy to key discussions and decisions, causing rework, increased costs and schedule delays.
  3. There were numerous challenges with server configuration and content where the contractor made unilateral decisions that were not discussed with the project team. The remedial effort wasted scarce time and money.

On the client side:

  1. Much of the effort focused on developing scripts to update the local and remote PC’s. The scripting work was done by an offshore team who were not very proficient. The quality was spotty, the work wasn’t completed on schedule and communication regarding progress was poor. In addition, the PM assigned by the contractor to oversee the work didn’t seem to have much influence over the offshore team.
  2. As a precaution, the PM asked the contractor to scan the desktops to ensure they found all machines with the software / code requiring upgrading. The results revealed there were far more desktops to upgrade than the business had advised, a significant expansion of the scope.
  3. There were a number of problems with the rollout that the contractor was slow to respond to, delaying completion and frustrating the business.