10.7 Conclusion

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Dealing with vendors can be frustrating. Your vendor representatives do not always have the full weight of their organization behind them. If they are small companies to begin with, or extremely busy or disorganized, the staff assigned to you may be stretched. You may find they have inadequate back end support. Instead of getting angry with that, understand how any such dysfunction is impacting your project and try to work with your management and theirs to resolve that. As was stated earlier, senior management on the vendor side is typically reactive, so no news is good news to them. If you disagree, make them aware of your concerns and lobby for joint, successful resolution.

I have had many positive vendor experiences and been proud of the work done by my colleagues when I was on the vendor side of the IT world. Quality people are the key to successful projects, no matter what logo appears on their paychecks.

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