Starting off with unclear objectives, scope and timeline

Your outsourcing partnership needs purpose. This means, from the outset, defining:

your reasons for outsourcing, how you see it affecting core business and how it will ultimately add value.

Next, ask yourself: do you want to lower costs or do you want better scalability, faster time-to-market or all of the above? Your ultimate objective/s need to be crystallised before you start looking for a vendor.

Without that strategic clarity, any potential vendor will be working blind. So, in much the same way as you’d engage your in-house employees, your outside partner needs a well-defined set of responsibilities, goals and project milestones – with the understanding that they’ll be measured against these at regular intervals throughout the process. Before development begins, be sure to establish any necessary objectives for the vendor to follow.

What’s more, without a proper plan to determine your outsourcing initiative, you risk skipping essential steps, such as proof of concept. As a result, you may be building an app that nobody needs or wants — which could have been identified during the product design phase.

Also, nothing can kill the momentum of a project more so than a lack of definition as to the project scope. Questions your outsourcing provider must answer with clarity:

What are the exact deliverables?

Who provides project oversight and what is that person’s expected duties?

What are the specific obligations of each party?

A rock-star level outsourcing team provides laser focus for timeline/deliverables expectations. Make sure to analyse the prospective provider’s approach to creating a clearly defined contract. Is the proposal bold and precise in laying out the process? Make sure both sides are clear about all the above items before you sign on the dotted line.