10.1 About Vendors

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Once you plug a vendor's name into the plan against a major deliverable, you are assigning responsibility to them and designating them as a critical facilitator of success. Whether they are writing code, delivering systems, or cobbling technology together in your computer rooms, you expect them to perform on time and up to your specifications. Unless you manage them properly, however, there is plenty of history that suggests their success in this regard is not a sure thing.

Why is that? Your company may already have paid this particular vendor millions, based on a longstanding partnership. Or, you have selected a vendor new to your firm - a vendor who now has the opportunity to get wonderful references from you after this project is done, and thus achieve greater penetration within your company with future opportunities.

You would think either scenario would provide the vendor with enough sensitivity to your requirements that the vendor marching with you in lock step to the finish line is assured, right? It would probably not happen that way. Honestly, though, one wonders why these relationships cause so much hand wringing and gnashing of teeth - on both sides, incidentally. Customers grouse about vendors, who, in turn, mutter among themselves about the unreasonableness of the customer set. Exhibit 1 offers a dispassionate look at client-vendor relationships in this manner.

Exhibit 1: Customer-Vendor Relationship Disconnects

The vendor may lack the logistical infrastructure or resource that can meet your needs precisely while servicing other, equally demanding customers.
How many superstars in their employ can be dedicated to your project.^[a]
Does your view of their deliverables, roles, and responsibilities match theirs?
Vendors generally see the customer squeezing relentlessly on price, while demanding scope creep for free.
Customers generally see vendors cherry picking (i.e., performing easy, profitable work while avoiding the tough, low-margin work that you really need them to produce).

^[a]While you are at it, take the same look at your own team.

Now that we have set the table for the discussion of managing vendors, let us look at the key areas.

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