There is a difference between “Sometimes we avoid consulting some resources deliberately” and “Without consulting the resources.” Please note the two words “sometimes” and “some.” My point is that it is not necessary that we have to every time consult everybody. Certain circumstances make it irrelevant, unimportant or even counter-productive to consult. I would like to repeat, only some special circumstances. The simplest example would be a crisis situation where you do not care much who is busy with what or who is present. The highest and the only priority is to get out of the crisis. Under such circumstances if it is really not possible for somebody to do what is expected of him and when it is expected of him, the only way forward is to move ahead without that person. The project could even be removing the survivors under the debris of a collapsed building. We won’t call a meeting with our key resources next Monday to check their availability. Will we?

Another case where outsourcing can be beneficial is cost savings. Outsources will agree to a fixed price based on agreed, established baselines. This enables the client to effectively manage their IT costs and the outsourcer to implement their best practices and productivity improvements.

While this is a subject I am very passionate about, if considering outsourcing, my suggestion is to: (1) understand your company’s pain points. What is it you want a vendor to help you with? (2) understand your metrics. What is your base case? What are your baselines? (3) Understand and have senior management buy in to the service levels your business needs. For example, don’t necessarily ask your vendor to provide a 7×24 Help Desk if your existing Help Desk gets a handful of calls per month …or …don’t ask for Platinum Server support for non critical servers or test/development. Just because you’ve done it this way before, doesn’t mean you should keep doing it that way.

last, a good outsourcing vendor will ‘partner’ with you and recommend ways to reduce cost and improve service. Make sure you have a good relationship with the vendor with trust, confidence and their executive commitment.

One thing to note also, is that outsourcing providers are so specialized that they bring immediate benefits to an organization that it wouldnt otherwise be able to acquire within the critical time frame.

Outsourcing also enables organizations to grab on to opportunity withouth having to wait for key resources to turn into organizational capabilities.