How To Manage External Partners?

wackoj123 says : Hi all,

Is this typical for the health care sector, or is this me not handling this like anyone else would?

I have had a couple of encounters with external partners with which we have been working on projects for exchanging data. Let me briefly try to explain what's happened.

After setting the specifications about the data to be exchanged, both ends (we and the external partner) build our own software to exchange the data (different systems required different software - we don't have any insight in the external partner's system, and they have no insight in our system, so we have both done the work needed on our own end).

During testing problems popped up - some bugs that needed to be fixed (no problems with that), but what has been troubling me are the issues where the external partner had "changed" the specifications about the protocol, without consulting or informing us: sending different data than agreed upon in the specs.

The question I am struggling with is, how to get the external partner to adhere to the specifications? I have just refered to the specs, but the external partner is a rather large organisation, and we are much smaller. Arguments like, "we have put so much effort and money in this exchange" are given to explain their changes and their unwillingness to revert to the specs, but none of these arguments cut any wood...

So, how would you handle such a situation? How can I convince the external partner to stick with the original plan and specs? I disagree with the change at this stage of the project and would not want to change to software on our end just because they are not adhering to the specs...

Any suggestions are very much appreciated.

J.

bas says : Hi J,

Well first of all, this is NOT typical for one particular sector, so don't worry :D

The main concern for me would be who's paying and responsible for the overall progress? Typically if there is a single customer giving two third parties the job to integrate two systems, the proper way is to let them decide. A typical response from me would be to the customer:

"He, we have a change in specs. Fine by me, but that will cost an extra X bucks. And BTW it will add an additional risk to the deadline and stability of the interface. Could you please sign off the request for change?"

And if they respond "No way are you mad!?" just indicate to tell the other supplier to stick to the plan.

So, who is picking up the tab, has the responsibility and, of course, what were the orginal agreements.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Bas

wackoj123 says : Hi Bas,

bas>Well first of all, this is NOT typical for one particular sector, so don't worry :D

The main concern for me would be who's paying and responsible for the overall progress? Typically if there is a single customer giving two third parties the job to integrate two systems, the proper way is to let them decide. A typical response from me would be to the customer:

"He, we have a change in specs. Fine by me, but that will cost an extra X bucks. And BTW it will add an additional risk to the deadline and stability of the interface. Could you please sign off the request for change?"

Well, in your example, that would work. Perhaps I should have made my situation a bit more clear... The project involves my organisation, and a long-term partner, where we are trying to improve an old file/email based exchange of data with a new protocol.
The thing is that we both gain from this new setup, and we both have to invest in the new setup - there is not one party paying for all of this, we both lose time and money by these delays.

We had set a deadline, but during testing these changes popped up, and the deadline was postponed. So, the situation I am trying to deal with might not be typical in software development - perhaps as an independent developer/project manager the situation might be a lot different, and you're comments would make a lot of sense, but unfortunately in this case it's different... :(

However, I do think I could use some of your suggestions in our discussions with the our external partner... Thanks. Any other suggestions are very much appreciated.

Jack

bas says : Hi Jack, (hehehehe love this one from "flying high" - movie)

Surely someone is accountable for the involvement of people, or timelines.
Is it line management? Is the endeaver in a project form?

Bas

j2006 says : The company I work for has outsourced several software development projects to companies in India and Russia. In fact, our current project uses two external teams, one in India and one in Russia. With our first project we ran into many of the same issues you described. In subsequent projects we used a service to ensure that all teams are coordinated and in-sync. The service holds all our requirements and we can track the progress of each requirement. Additionally, all change requests are documented and must be approved before they can become a new requirement. Everything is documented, everything requires approval before work can commence, everything is automated, and all parties have the appropriate visibiliy and control needed to ensure that everyone performs as required. The system we use is new and its a hosted service. Check it out at artifactnetwork.com. I hope this helps.