IT Project Manager's Guide to Vendor Management

Understanding the business use cases is the critical first step for a vendor to put together a solution for the client.

This vendor will discuss the process to identify vendors that the client will ultimately select.

The vendor evaluation sheet is a useful tool to identify vendors that the client will ultimately want to select.

The Request for Proposal (RFP) is the document that vendors will use to propose their solutions to the client.

The initial meeting with the vendor is important to understand if they can implement the client's use cases.  Also, this meeting is important to understand how the vendor communicates.

The vendor demonstration is important for the client to understand if the vendor understood their use cases.

After meetings with vendors have occurred, a vendor selection process takes place to select a top choice to enter into a contract with.

Price with the vendor needs to be negotiated or, at the very least, a bundle of services that can be offered at a discount.

The SOW document outlines the work the vendor will be accountable for.

The SOW review process is important for the legal teams from both the client and vendor to be in agreement of the SOW terms.

When the vendor is onboarded, they will need training as to how to leverage the client's resources.

A Communications Management plan will be important to develop with the client so that the client and vendor will understand how to communicate with each other.

The estimation methods for the project needs to be understood so that the team knows how to measure how long tasks will take.

Agile estimation will be looked at as many organizations are moving toward the Agile methodology.

Whatever methodology is used, the project activities need to be planned to ensure there are no dependencies, risks, or concerns that tasks cannot be implemented.

The vendor needs to be involved in the development of the project schedule. 

The vendor IS NOT doing favors for the Project Manager.  The client Project Manager must hold the Vendor accountable for them to get their work done on time and within budget.

One crucial aspect of working with a vendor is to have support parameters arranged for the vendor to properly support the client.

The vendor must follow the Service Level Agreement (SLA) terms.  If there are issues, the project manager will help to escalate.

The vendor requires a strong disaster recovery plan to ensure the safety of their client's data.  If this is not the case, this can become a HUGE risk to the client's operational processes.

Once the vendor project resources are done with the project, they need to be safely removed from the client's infrastructure.  This process will ensure that there is no security risk to the client in the form of unauthorized personnel accessing the client's resources.

This maintenance support plan ensures that the client will continue to receive the proper support while leveraging the vendor's product.

Please leverage the attached course notes to have as a handy reference for future research.  Thank you so much for watching this course and I hope the information presented herein was helpful.