International Project Management: Leadership in Complex Environments

Specific end products related to outsourcing include the following:

• Agreement on what services will be provided under what terms.

• Measurement of what the vendor does.

• Transfer of knowledge from the vendor to internal staff.

• Performance of the vendor on specific tasks.

As you can imagine, doing this for political-type vendors is more difficult than for technical vendors. Yet, it must be done. Otherwise, you will be paying out money to a vendor for months and then later find out that nothing happened. That is what occurred to many European powers when they first worked in the Orient! It is, in short, an old story.