Selection and Management of Subcontractors in Informatization Projects
For large-scale management information systems, it is often risky for a contractor to undertake all the work because of the complexity of the system and the multi-disciplinary characteristics involved, especially for foreign contractors, who are unfamiliar with the situation in China and need to find one or more local partners to fill their shortcomings in some aspects; In addition, China is rich in human resources and the wages of technicians are low, which is also the reason why they choose local subcontractors; Owners generally encourage this practice, which is beneficial to both sides. However, the selection of subcontractors adds an intermediate link to the implementation of the project, and the existence of this link may cause some potential adverse effects on the construction of the system. Combined with the author's experience in the construction of the management system of the Three Gorges Project, this paper discusses the problems that the contractor may bring to the project and the owner when choosing subcontractors.
First, the position of subcontractors in the process of project implementation.
In principle, in the process of project implementation, subcontractors should completely obey the will of the project contractor, because they get remuneration from the contractor, and they are responsible for the contractor in their work, not the owner, and any problems that arise are ultimately the responsibility of the contractor to the owner. However, on many issues, based on the understanding of domestic situation and familiarity with the management system formulated by other domestic units, subcontractors can often put forward some opinions or schemes that the owners are more interested in, and these opinions or schemes are likely to be opposed by the contractors. Contractors sometimes object to such opinions or suggestions, not because they think they are wrong, but because the result of doing so is likely to disrupt their entire plan and process. We should know that foreign project managers have a strong sense of cost and planning, and once the plan is formulated and approved, it will not be easily changed. In this case, if the owner stands firm, the contractor will generally obey. The problem is that if this happens frequently, it will inevitably bring the consequences of changes or claims to the project and seriously affect the normal implementation of the contract. (Related Article: Problems and Countermeasures of Enterprise Information System Project Management)
Second, the influence of the treatment of subcontractor's personnel on the owner's employees.
The wages of subcontractors and local personnel directly employed by general contractors are obviously higher than those of employees at the same level of the owner, which has a great influence on the work enthusiasm of employees of the owner who participate in the system construction. Maybe it is a classmate who graduated from the same university in the same year. Because he was hired by different companies, the treatment was completely different. For some people, this actually reflects different degrees of respect for personal values. To make matters worse, enterprises spend a lot of money to train some talents in information technology. When they have mastered enough skills and accumulated enough qualifications and experience, the temptation of the outside world and dissatisfaction with their personal situation force them to choose to resign, sometimes when the enterprise is in urgent need. If they resign collectively, it will completely abort the informatization construction process that the whole enterprise has finally implemented. (Related article: Skills of dealing with people in ERP implementation)
Third, the control of the number of subcontractors.
Software development emphasizes standards and standardization. At different stages of the development process, the development methods and steps should pursue consistency and coherence. The contractor should choose a relatively fixed software development partner, and can't change subcontractors at will because of disagreement or other reasons, especially those subcontractors that are more popular with the owner. The increase in the number of subcontractors will not only reduce productivity and slow down the work process, but more importantly, it may increase the maintenance workload of the future system, because different people have different ideas; Similarly, different programmers have different programming habits. Although it seems that the system function did meet the requirements specified in the functional specification at that time, the implementation method may be completely different. In addition, for owners who own software property rights (copyrights) and a large number of enterprise secrets, too many subcontractors may bring some security problems; Therefore, the owner should strengthen the management of subcontractors. Generally speaking, the contractor must obtain the consent of the owner in advance when selecting any subcontractor.
The above are collected and sorted by Zhong Da Consulting Company.
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