In this class, you will learn how to:

• Retain outsourced project cost reductions through solid engagement control
  
• Utilize cultural diversity to amplify result delivery
  
• Control known outsource risks
  
• Understand joint and individual project responsibilities
  
• Prepare for outsourced projects – getting your business in order
  
• Appreciate the true value of outsourcing through proper cost and benefit analysis
  
• Manage outsourced engagement involving traditional and agile delivery models
  
• Acknowledge the importance of viability when compared to capability
  

As an added bonus, you will receive recognition as Certified Outsource/Offshore Project Managers (COOPM). This designation is sanctioned by the International Institute for Outsource Management and recognizes your proficiency in this critically important, highly specialized topic area.

20 Key benefits of Attending this class

1. Learn to accurately measure the cost versus the benefits on any outsourced project
   
2. Learn the mechanics of cross-cultural teamwork, and how to integrate them on your projects
   
3. How your weaknesses that you compensated for now have to be addressed when projects are outsourced
   
4. Learn why successful outsourcing is not driven by contractual stipulations (these are remedial measures)
   
5. Understand the importance of ownership responsibilities being clearly defined
   
6. Evaluate the different communication mediums available, and why multiple trips might be necessary
   
7. Learn why onshore contracts from outsource providers does not deliver better results
   
8. Understand how project management involves 3 plans, each intertwined with the other (outsourcer-client-collaborative plans)
   
9. Appreciate that outsourcing requires onshore investment in details that would have been compensated for through local understanding
   
10. Understand that a ‘word’ does not necessarily mean ‘the word’
    
11. Learn why failure propensity in outsourcing is directly attributable to mutual misunderstanding and lack of outsourcing knowledge and experience
    
12. Establish realistic expectations beyond cost savings
    
13. Determine what portion of work to outsource and what portion to retain
    
14. Learning the warning signs of things going wrong and techniques for dealing with them early
    
15. Incorporate cultural benefits that add value to all team members
    
16. Know when owning offshore may be the answer to success, and when it is not the answer for your situation
    
17. Learn how to pick the right project and techniques for ensuring its success
    
18. Form-specific measures that monitor outsourced projects
    
19. Learn the key steps to becoming an effective Outsource/Offshore Project Manager
    
20. Establish how Outsource/Offshore Project Management can be a team event, and why that matters 
    
    

We might want to ask whether everything is working smoothly here? Projects fail in much the same fashion as a person’s health; bad diet, inattention to proper care, and late stage resolution attempts. These characteristics manifest early and are major contributors to poor health in outsourced projects.

Savings is key!

Outsourcing is pursued by the lure for immediate reductions in costs. With this comes a new way of doing things and this introduces risk, which often reduces the savings that were anticipated. The pursuit requires an appreciation for the phasing in of savings, and how you as the project manager have a lot to do with seeing that this happens.

Skills, technologies, and tools

Outsourcing requires a continuous review of success and failure. You must be prepared to assess the situation throughout each step of the process. In this interactive workshop, you’ll develop the skills and receive the tools necessary to achieve results. Case studies facilitated by your instructor will give you the practice needed to prepare for the real thing.

Critical success factors for outsourced opportunities

The vast majority of outsourced projects are new development or full scope events. There are however opportunities for outsourcing to provide legacy application re-engineering, ongoing maintenance, prototyping and even limited element construction. Have we sent to much of the project offshore, when a smaller portion might have been okay? Should we initially use outsourcing as a way to learn about project dynamics and opportunity possibilities? Developing the right plan for your project while preparing for the challenges will make for project success on your outsource activities.

Live, In-Class Group Exercises
Bring a flash drive when you attend this class! The instructor will provide a set of useful tools you can immediately use back at the office.

1. Teams and Project Management
The exercise develops an understanding of project methods, deliverables and the work effort required in order to produce a suitable result. A consolidated solution set is produced as a bi-product and can be used as a starting point back in your organization.

2. Communications
Using a real scenario, groups will discuss how they will respond to a situation involving a missed deliverable deadline (on the part of the client) and how they will help the outsourcer to overcome the impact that it will have on the project schedule.

3. Managing Remotely
Groups will discuss and establish a structure around remote communications, balance leadership and methods that can be employed to carry out project management, in a global theater.

4. Cultural Differences
Using your colleagues the groups will discuss how their differences effect their attitudes, approach and expectations. This information will then be compared to how it influences professional roles and final interaction with people from other cultures.