This paper provides advice on defining and building an effective team, highlights industry best practices, and provides recommendations for the team's role, size and required skillset.
An outsourcing agreement is deemed successful if the expected benefits are harvested and the organization’s stakeholders recognize that the deal is delivering these benefits. Achieving these two objectives is dependent on the effectiveness of the client team managing the agreement. A team that is too large or too small, or that lacks the required skills or has the wrong mandate, will jeopardize the successful implementation of the agreement.
These teams often are referred to as “stay back teams” or retained organizations. For the purpose of this discussion, stay back team refers to the team in the client organization that is responsible for managing the outsourcing agreement with a service provider. Its functions broadly focus on governance, relationship management and ensuring that IT addresses the organization’s business requirements (the “strategic” management of IT).
Planning for such a team should happen early in the bid process. To help organizations develop a stay back team that guides a successful outsourcing agreement, this paper presents CGI’s advice for defining and building the team, highlights industry best practices, and provides recommendations for the team’s role, size and required skill set.
