There is no doubt that a multi-vendor project is very difficult to manage. For this reasons, the project’s outcome is not as well as it was expected. The conventional unsuccessful thoughts, lack of communication, an unsolvable chaos only leads to the deliverable products that are much below the actual standards. The vendors fail to understand the customer’s requirements along with being stuck in the complexity of multi vendors. This results in the lack of goodwill from the client’s end and can affect the further projects and vendors as well.
But there are certain ways which a multi-vendor project can be managed well. These are the key areas working on which the multivendor projects would improve.
- Communication – communication should be given the utmost priority in a multi-vendor project as most of the multi-vendor projects fail due to lack of proper communication between customer and vendor. It is always advisable to confront a person directly to solve the problem immediately, rather than sending emails and waiting for the reply.
- Performance Reports –it is imperative to get a performance report ready to check the progress of the project concerned. The reports must contain the problems, the solutions of the problems, the practical working areas, improvements and risks, migration plans (if any) and should be submitted on a weekly basis.
- Roles of assignment matrix – This need to be made clear to both the customers and vendors to avoid disputes during the project. Each and every person would be well aware of their responsibilities. Another reason why the roles and responsibilities assignment matrix should be defined in the early stages of the project is to avoid stakeholders from jumping during decision-making.
- Risk management– the most unwanted term of a project that cannot be avoided. It is very necessary to timely manage the risk without hindering the deliverables. Identify the risks (threats & opportunities) that could affect the Project objectives, Assessing the risks regarding their impact on the project. Planning steps to help reduce risk and finally Implementing the planned steps
- Change management– changing the management accordingly to improve the project. This might be costly sometimes depending on the alteration request made.
Following these steps would only make the chaotic mismanaged vendor work in a well planned and peaceful manner,