Partner Management
In modern IT landscapes, no company is an island. Success depends significantly on the quality and steering of external partners — agencies, software houses, and cloud providers. Professional partner management transforms pure supplier relationships into strategic partnerships.
The goal is to reduce dependency, ensure the quality of deliveries, and set common incentives for long-term success.
Anti-Patterns: Problems with External Partners
- The Black Box Agency: You get results but don't understand the path to get there. Knowledge remains exclusively with the partner.
- Agency Lock-in: The code or infrastructure is so specifically tailored to the partner that switching is impossible or extremely expensive.
- Incongruent Goals: The partner earns by hours (time), the company needs results (value). This leads to inefficiency.
- Lack of Onboarding: External teams don't know the internal standards and strategic direction and develop past the target.
Strategic Partnership
- Clear Standards & Guidelines: External partners must adhere to internal architecture and code standards (see Tech Radar).
- Transparent Processes: Integration of external teams into internal communication channels (e.g. Slack/Teams) and task management tools.
- Shared Success Models: Using contract models that reward quality and goal achievement instead of just billing time.
- Regular Health Checks: Structured reviews of the collaboration at a strategic level — beyond day-to-day project business.
- Knowledge Transfer: Ensuring that critical knowledge about the system is also built up and documented internally.
The Focus: Partners as a Complement, not a Replacement
External expertise is brought in specifically to scale internal capacity or contribute specialist knowledge. Strategic ownership and architectural knowledge remain within the company.
FAQ
Should we not outsource our IT completely so we can focus on our core business?
No. The strategic steering of your technology is today part of your core business. You can outsource the implementation, but never the responsibility for the architecture and direction.
How do we deal with agencies that want to enforce their own standards?
Through clear requirements in the tender and in the contract. Whoever works for you must use your Paved Roads so that the system remains maintainable for you.
Reference Guide
- The Art of Partnering: Guide for strategic alliances. Wiley
- Vested Outsourcing: A model for performance-based partnerships. vestedway.com
- SLAs & Service Level Management: Best practices for defining service quality. ITIL Foundation