For most technology executives, the question of
outsourcing is not whether projects will be outsourced, but which projects will
be outsourced. Budget limitations prevent hiring the staff required for every
project, particularly when employees are only needed on a temporary basis.
As some IT executives find, the right resources
for a project may not be available for hire in their area. Even if the team is
qualified and available, a project might not be the best use of their time.
When should a project stay in-house and when should you outsource? Here’s a
checklist to help make the right decision.
Is the project strategic to the core mission of
the company?
While IT projects come from all directions,
they can usually be looked at in one of two ways. Either the project is core to
the strategic goals of the company, or it’s more of a tactical solution that
solves an immediate need. Tactical projects are easier to outsource, because
they are typically short-term in scope, may supply a small immediate need, and
tend to have a closely-defined end goal.
Strategic projects feed the core mission of the
company. While they can often be broken into small, manageable chunks,
strategic projects often have a life that extends well beyond the push to
production and may go through multiple iterations.
Does your existing team have the necessary
skills to complete the project?
One of the more exciting aspects of IT is that
the resources you have today may not be the resources you need for tomorrow’s
project. Any time you are looking at in-house vs. outsourcing, it’s important
to examine the project goal in the context of the resources on hand.
One key place where I’ve personally encountered
a resource limitation was in scaling systems. I had a great team of engineers
who were capable of supporting and fine-tuning the existing IT infrastructure,
but they weren’t the team I would choose to re-architect the infrastructure
from the ground up. Hiring experts at scalability was my solution: They helped
to plan and execute the migration, and that in turn helped mitigate the risk of
magnifying a problem of scale.
What is the workload of your existing team?
If your current team is already handling as
many projects as they can manage, outsourcing is the only viable way to add
more projects to a full schedule. This keeps your team focused on the big
picture, while allowing more projects to move forward. Conversely, if you have
a lull (as if that happens) it can be a great opportunity to examine the
projects that were shelved due to lack of resources.
Even if you have the necessary team, is the
project the best use of their time?
This could also be characterized by asking if
your team will dread coming to work if they have to do the project. Many IT
projects are necessary for meeting business objectives, but aren’t the best
allocation of your limited resources. By keeping your team focused on projects
that keep them excited to come to work, you retain great employees longer and
meet the big goals. Outsourcing the “boring” stuff keeps your team from feeling
like they are being punished.
Is the project a one-off or part of a bigger
mission?
In other words, is it something that needs
attention now, but may never be needed again?
Data migrations are something that fall into
the one-off category. If you need to migrate data between database structures
or get data into a format that matches your existing schema, an outside team
can be ideal. Typically, once the data migration is complete, the work is done,
so you only need to outsource for a limited time. Your core team may write
specifications for the migration and then hand off to external team who can
complete the heavy lifting.
How well will your team work with an outside
contractor?
The only time I’ve ever found a challenge in
integrating outside contractors with the in-house team is when the team is
fearful they will be replaced. As a manager, convincing the team that the
contractors are being used for a specific project on a limited term, so that
the team can focus on other projects, is important to maintaining harmony among
the team. Sometimes this means including the team in the process to the point
where they understand what the contractors are working on and how it fits into
the overall picture.
These are by no means the only scenarios where
you may consider outsourcing as an option, but by running down the list of
options above, you can arrive fairly quickly at whether you should be looking
for an outsourcing team or completing the project in house.
