Articlr

The other day I answered a question about working with outsource partners. The guy who asked the question complained that he had been trying to find reliable outsourcing partners but the level of responsiveness he got was ways below his expectations. He was asking what the reasonable level of responsiveness is. Here is what I answered him:

When you oursource, always give a deadline of at least a week before your actual deadline. And of course - don't tell them about the one-week reserve. Most of the people whom you outsource to work on several projects simultaneously and one of the most difficult things for them is to fit everybody in their schedule. Because of that, urgent projects or projects that must be finished by a particular date become of higher priority for your outsourcing partner and he or she concentrates mainly on this project.

You should always tell your expectations before you start the project. Always ask your potential outsourcing partners if they are able to take new clients and if they have the time to devote to you.

If they can take new clients and they have the time to devote to your project, your next question is about the turnaround time on the project. They will tell you when you can expect them to start and finish the project.

However, if you want to be sure that you both speak the same language, ask again. For instance, you can say: "If we start the project on Monday, it'll be done by XYZ date. Am I right?" If they say yes, this means that you have achieved their commitment to finish the project by a particular date.

My next step is to give a trial project. A trial project is meant to test the waters and to see how we communicate. So give them a project, which is not time-sensitive.

One of the other questions that I would give you to ask them is, "How do you like to communicate with your clients? Is it via telephone or is it via email? If it is via email, what is the best one to reach you at? Is it via instant messaging? If so, do you use MSN, Yahoo, Skype? What instant messaging do you use and what is your ID name and what hours do you generally work?"

Different people work at different times. For instance, some of the webmasters I know work only at night because then they are most productive. Other webmasters work in the daytime.

Work hours matter a lot because if your partner's work hours don't match yours - i.e. they work mostly at night while you don't, communication - especially over critical and time sensitive questions - will be very painful.

The other thing that I would like to do when I am working with an outsource partner is take the guess work out of the project for them. This is my personal preference so not everybody does this but I found this to be more effective from my own projects.

For instance, when I have outsourced the creation of a website, I browse a lot and find many sites I like. Then I show them to the webmaster, so that he can use them as reference while creating my site.

I pick up five to ten sites and tell the webmaster what I like in each site - i.e. the colors, the fonts, the layout, etc. I provide many examples to illustrate my point.

You might object that this all takes you a lot of time. That's right, but this is the way to eliminate the guesswork and to cut the unnecessary communication. When you present sites you like, this helps your outsourcing partner to get an idea of what you want and this makes it easier for him or her to create exactly what you want. This approach saves both tons of money and a lot of time and that's why it has been working for me without failure.

Like I said, number one is managing expectations upfront and getting the commitment of the outsource partner himself or herself to tell you their timeline and to share with you what you can expect and it comes from them. The other thing is to find out the best way to communicate with them and the best time to reach them.

Then also, your first project with any Outsource partner definitely make it a project that for you is not time sensitive but you are basically using that project to test the waters. If you are not comfortable with them, do not give them any other work because there is something that is telling you that it is not right so move on to the next.

Sometimes it is one of those trial and error situations where you go through a bunch of them until you find somebody that you enjoy working with and produces great work. Once you find that relationship, you want to hang on to it with everything you have got.