13.9 Person Responsible for Subcontractor Contact

The person responsible for subcontractor contact ensures cooperation with possible subcontractor(s). For each subcontractor, a contract is required, whose terms must be monitored during development and at final delivery. This person must make sure that the subcontractor's configuration management activities fulfill the requirements.

Borderlines between configuration management in the project itself and of the subcontractor must be clarified, as well as how these lines may be crossed. The subcontractor may place his or her material under configuration management independently of the rest of the project, but it must all be transferred to the project's configuration management system in connection with delivery.

To be able to cooperate with the subcontractor about configuration management, the person responsible for subcontractor contact must have a good knowledge of configuration management principles generally and as they are carried out in the company and the project. The person filling this role must also understand the subcontractor's method of working and configuration management and have the necessary knowledge to formulate requirements regarding the subcontractor and follow up on them. This of course also demands a talent for cooperation.

The types of activities depend on the nature of the cooperation with the subcontractor. A close cooperation will often involve substantial contact with the subcontractor, while a more isolated subdelivery may require only a single contact. Depending on the contract, activities typically include

• Defining requirements for the subcontractor's configuration management system

• Maintaining contact between the subcontractor and the project

• Following up with the subcontractor to ensure that configuration management requirements are fulfilled

• Receiving and performing quality assurance on subdeliveries and forwarding these to internal configuration management

• Forwarding event registration and possibly change requests to the subcontractor for configuration items for which the subcontractor is responsible

• Receiving event registrations from the subcontractor

References

More details about relevant subjects may be found in Chapters 14Subcontractor and 20Multiple Stakeholders.