How to keep track of your outsourced project
There are numerous justifications for why a company could choose to outsource work. Outsourcing might be the ideal answer for your business. If you don’t currently have the capacity or skills to take on a project, outsourcing is your answer. Managing an outsourced project involves a lot of responsibilities, and if you don’t have a framework in place, it can become difficult. You should always be searching for methods to simplify your life as a business owner or project manager.
It is crucial that you are managing outsourced projects successfully, if you are currently outsourcing or considering outsourcing work to independent contractors or other businesses, like ReedPS.
A fantastic approach to keep your business growing without going over budget is to outsource jobs. For specific jobs and projects that will take less time than if you were handling it all yourself, you can engage an outside company. However, this comes with additional accountability on your end. If you don’t take care of how many things are happening at once, you will lose track of everything. Missed deadlines, delayed projects, and dissatisfied end users can result from failing to maintain track of your outsourcing partners and processes.
Step One: Choose the right partner and communicate
The first step to keeping track of an outsourced project is hiring the right people. Whether that be a company or an individual. Having confidence in the business you hire will hopefully reduce any issues further down the line in regard to project requirements and deadlines. This will make the project a lot easier to keep track of and manage in the long run.
The most crucial thing you can do to remain on track is to communicate excessively. In other words, make sure that your outsourcing firm fully comprehends the commercial objectives of your project. Having these conversations during the hiring process will allow you to be more selective on who you hire by enabling you to see who will be the most compatible for your business and the project at hand. Tell your outsourcing provider everything they need to know about your business, clients, and practices. Open and comfortable communication between you and your outsourced team will be really beneficial.
Step Two: Implement the use of project management applications
In order to ensure that your outsourced projects are completed successfully and on schedule, project management software will be essential. If you don’t currently use project management software, we strongly advise that you do so.
The best tool to keep track of your team and project will be dependent on the work that’s being completed. Each application will offer something different and meet different criteria. These tools will help document the process. From understanding the current stage of the project, the assignment of tasks and the remaining work.
For example, a few management tools that are used widely across businesses are Trello and Asana. Trello is a project management tool that divides your work into boards. As a result, it allows you to quickly see what is being worked on, who is working on it, and where it is in the process. Asana is a dashboard for managing your workplace, it makes it easier for teams and organisations to communicate with one another and divide projects into tasks and establish specific objectives for teams. Asana is integrated with hundreds of other business-oriented programmes, including Google Drive and Outlook.
Step Three: Frequently test and monitor your project
Above all, monitoring your project throughout is key. Testing and monitoring are the best methods to guarantee that your outsourced project goes successfully. This is why it will be beneficial in the long term to test frequently and early.
Before going on to the next stage of your project, make sure you and everyone else engaged in the project run through its current stages and determine if there are any early arising issues to be solved straight away and can avoid a break in the project. This method can improve project tracking by determining how well everything goes and assisting with time estimation.
To learn more from Holly Waite take a look at the talk that took place during DLWeek 2023 How to augment your teams for excellent project delivery – Best Practices
