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Software Vendor Management Uses the Basics of Software Engineering

Typical Software Vendor Problems

Let's set the scene: A software vendor is engaged to produce a product or sells a product that does a specific task for your organization. Some pointy haired boss has signed a contract and a project has been set up to receive the software and implement it in your organization and will have internal administrators and internal support for users. You are now put on this project. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, a number of things. For example, what if the software as delivered is buggy and also the user interface makes it difficult for your users to complete tasks. Maybe the promised updates do not work and cannot be moved to production in time to meet your project deadlines. Maybe the install process takes weeks to set up and many hours to complete, if it is at all successful. Maybe the update never fixes the myriad of problems you emailed the vendor over the last 3 months. Your vendor is obviously a clown. So now what?

Software Engineering Practices That Cut Risk

Any successful open source or commercial software vendor that makes software uses the following engineering practices, shouldn't your outsourced project do the same? It is time to check the software engineering processes in use at the vendor:

Does the vendor have a bug list that you as a customer can report and track bugs and issues including those of other customers?
Does the vendor have regular [daily,weekly] builds?
Does the vendor package the software for installation?
Does the vendor install the package for regular [daily, weekly] integration testing on their own systems?
Does the vendor install the package on a configuration similar to your systems before shipping to you?
Does the vendor have regression testing and release testing before publishing or shipping the installation package?
Is there a test set they ship with the software package to verify stuff works after you install it on your systems?

Naturally, YOU would have checked all this before buying software from a vendor, but that pointy haired boss has a brother in law working as a consultant to the vendor, or kickback$ are involved. So you are hosed, game over, get another project or job.

But let's say you are not in that unfortunate situation, your hair is kind of pointy and you are just a bit ignorant of managing a vendor contract. So verify the above check list with your vendor, (well, get someone who knows how to verify the above check list that is not hired by the vendor), and put these things in the contract BEFORE you buy the software, verify that these things are done BEFORE you pay. That is work, work is hard, so suck it up and do it and then cut at least one point off your hair.

Software Engineering Does Not Go Away When Outsourcing

Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Apache, Linux, FireFox, whatever successful software organization you choose from free to obscenely expensive, they all do the processes on the above list when they do a successful project. They may call it something else but they do it. When managing a software vendor you and the vendor will have to do the same processes to have a success. Just because a vendor produces the software does not mean you can rely on them to do proper engineering behind a curtain and then you get to act suprised when everything is crap. If that happens that means YOU have not done YOUR job to manage a software contract.