ISBN: 978-90-76258-38-6
20 pages
In large organizations there seems to be a trend to outsource all software development (and maintenance) projects to one single selected partner. These type of contracts seem to become more popular nowadays, as it is perceived to be easier to handle only one supplier than many suppliers and significant reductions in contract management are usually expected by the customers.
However, as the internal competition is removed, the supplier can basically ask whatever price they wish for the software projects they need to do, as there is no alternative for the customer to turn to. Being a monopolist means that you are in power of determining the price. It is therefore essential in these type of projects to implement a supplier performance measurement process that should keep everybody sharp, with realistic targets which should result in industry average or better performance. This implies that special consideration needs to be given in the contracting phase as it is absolutely necessary to select a mature and professional supplier that can handle performance measurement based on software metrics. This mini guide describes a best practice that was used in a large telecom provider in the Netherlands to select one single supplier for a longer period of time to do all the software development work for them. It shows a model that was constructed with the aim of selecting the supplier that is capable to deliver data of completed projects in the way requested. This data is assessed in order to exclude unrealistic data and productivity and quality metrics were analyzed to assess the performance of the suppliers.
This mini guide is free for Nesma platinum members. Prices for other types of members and non-members can be found on the downloads page of the Nesma miniguides for software metrics in contracts.