Saturday, March 30, 2002

 
Posted by Mike Tarrani 11:14 AM
New Thread? Not! The material on software development RFPs and contracts was in response to a friend's questions. The topic has taken on a life of its own. On the plus side we've all pitched in and provided information to someone who needed it, and that's what TEAM Zarate-Tarrani is all about, and why we started these weblogs in the first place. An added bonus is this material complements layers in the Tarrani-Zarate model, which I've been writing about. On the minus side, however, is I'm behind on the series about the Tarrani-Zarate Model. I'll err on the side of sharing information every time, so I'm going to wrap up the software development and contract topic and leave it to Kate and Linda to fill in any gaps.

Putting a Fine Point on it All. The final documents and resources I'm going to share are:

• An article titled Fixed Price IS Development Contracts (online), which discusses some of the basic and finer points of this contract model.
• Internal vs. External Software Maintenance: An Empirical Study of Transaction Cost Economics Propositions (online), which supports the decision of whether to outsource maintenance vs. performing this function in-house. As an aside, maintenance is a common goal for development contracts, and even if your goal is to contract out for the development of a new application, the issue of maintenance needs to be addressed.
• A series of online articles that cover the full spectrum of software development contract issues (be aware that these articles are based on UK law):
  1. Software Development Agreements
  2. Maintenance & Support Agreements
  3. Escrow
  4. Outsourcing
  5. Licenses
• A collection of MS Word and PowerPoint documents on Software Development Contracts
• A dissertation in MS Word format on Outsourcing Software Development
• Whitepaper in PDF format titled Vendor Screening in IT Contracts
• Whitepaper in PDF format titled Estimating Software Contracts, which addresses a critical aspect of development contracts from both the vendor and buyer perspectives - PDF format
• GSA Guide to Acquiring Software Development Services in PDF format (the US Government's General Services Administration is probably one of the best sources for mature acquisition and contracting practices, as is shown in this document

I'm ending this entry with one final document that is an example of a decision support tool for in-house vs. outsourcing development. It employs standard risk adjustment factors based on PERT (program evaluation and review technique), and uses one standard deviation to the normalized result to increase the safety factor to 84% probability (versus the 50% probability that the PERT formula yields). This is an example from a real life document.