A Vendor Development Program: Smart Clients Are a Success Factor

• This presentation was created for a conference series or symposium and does not necessarily reflect the positions and views of the Software Engineering Institute.

• Abstract

  In this 2014 TSP Symposium presentation, the Performance and Capability Evaluation (PACE) establishes a framework to build the management capabilities that transform outsourcing companies into strategic business partners. Firms with an outsourcing strategy need data for decision making and need the ability to govern the service portfolio in order to enjoy the benefits of successful relationships with software providers. Internal resources’ skills correlate directly to the firm’s transformation success. To obtain this success, the client must help its provider succeed by helping it grow and improve capabilities and performance.

  The PACE framework offers measurable goals, a baseline for process improvement, and a maturity path to documentation of metrics and performance reporting. This framework can support a Vendor Development Program based on the four dimensions of PACE: coverage, fidelity, performance, and customer satisfaction. It also provides the database structure to collect the vendors’ project data. Establishing this program poses a double challenge: it is not only one firm’s internal transformation, it also requires external firms’ transformation.

• Slides