Strategic Partner Selection - A Rude Awakening!

Working in a startup has its own challenges. We pride ourselves on trying to create a solution that is not yet out there in the market. The great thrill is to see who crosses the finish line first, specially now with some competitors coming. Time to market being critical, we invited a company to help us build some of our components as our team was busy and here is what happened!

For the first time, I was on the customer side of the outsourcing relationship! We were thrown a bunch of people in a pre-sales pitch. The partner team was more interested in knowing how many people will they be able to make billable rather than knowing what work needed to be done. We had a day long meeting of sharing facts with them and deciding where they could bring value.

We wait for a week and they get in touch with us and propose that they should do everything for us (instead of our own technology team!). They disregard their positioning and their depth, but they propose that the partner will cure all the troubles with Scrum! I guess there are some folks who still think that Technology and Agile Management drives business/domain rather than otherwise! Needless to say, we disregarded their advice, but the following best practices emerged

1. Always do references check with an existing customer of the company. A call is a must if meeting them is not an option.
2. Choosing a partner must bring in domain knowledge of your own domain.In our case, this was health care!
3. Try and ensure that you can ensure that you meet your team on your projects. - A Hard Sell, but very very important.
4. PILOTS are the right and only way! Constraints of Time, Cost and Scope are ever present, but if you are the manager, ensure that you give the partner a project with low priority but above average difficulty to gauge the team.
5. For managers risk identification and mitigation is everything right? So do a map of strengths and weakness of the partner and once the relationship is established, do appropriate work allocation.