I’ve been a member of Project Management Institute, Paris region chapter for one month, and went to my first Project Management Institute event last Tuesday. It took place in the Maison des Mines, in the old Paris (see picture).

For a couple hours, I carefully listened to 2 lectures by Jérôme David from Technology Partners Inc., and Vincent Massol from KPIT Cummins, on outsourcing and offshoring in respectively industrial & software environments.

Here’s a quick review of an event that I found both extremely interesting and useful.

After a brief introduction by Jean-Claude Bernard, the very laid back and professional VP Finance of PMI France (also a senior executive in the Schlumberger Groupe if my memory’s correct), Jérôme David begins with introducing himself (12 years at EDS in France, the US, Asia – 6 years at TPI) and his company, Technology Partners Inc. (TPI), to the audience. TPI is an international outsourcing consultancy working on behalf of big corporate accounts, like GM, from sourcing suppliers to establishing contracts and supervising day-to-day operations. TPI has sourced about 780 contracts so far for a total transaction value of 320$bn, employing 450 consultants worldwide (70 in Europe, 5 in France), being involved in 100+ outsourcing contracts re-negotiations or restructurings.

The actual theme of Jérôme David’s speech was the following: “Distance effects of Outsourcing & the role of a Project Manager”.

10 points I remember from Jérôme David’s lecture:

• The lecturer started by providing 3 distance effect examples: client-supplier distance, geographical distance, cultural distance.
• The one who negotiates the deal isn’t the one who implements: big mistake!
• The 4 aspects of outsourcing: performance management, financial management, contract administration, relationship management.
• Solid processes are essential to address the distance factor.
• In case the relationship goes wrong, don’t go to court until there’s no more skin in the game.
• Start negotiating a “right to audit” from day One.
• Contractually ensure the presence and role of Key Employees during the whole outsourcing engagement.
• Start with simple, small, package-able projects. And let time scale things up.
• A black-box project is a project in which the client only worries about writing specifications and waiting for deliverables, without getting involved in the contractor’s process.
• If the business plan doesn’t show potential for at least 50% in cost-savings, don’t go for outsourcing. Draw a better business plan or wait for better times and ideas.

After a short break, Vincent Massol’s lecture got started.

Vincent Massol is a technical director at KPIT Cummins, an Indian company heavily promoting Agile Offshore Software Development (AOSD) techniques. What a coincidence, the lecture was precisely about Agile Offshore Software Development…

Here are the 10 key points I brought back home from this second lecture:

• AOSD is all about short iterative lifecycles (2 weeks sounds good) in a distributed development environment: organize your team, iterate fast, integrate continuously, share infrastructure, and communicate frequently.
• A best practice: the daily scrum meeting. In maximum 15 minutes, everybody in the team, independently from the location, gets to say what (s)he did the previous day and is planning to do the same day. That’s it: no problem solving or brainstorming.
• Think about re-factoring issues from scratch. The structure of the system (defined at iteration 0 when use cases architecture is drawn up) should allow for additive functions to come at a later stage.
• Time boxing: the delivery date never changes. What may differ is content.
• Share, share, share: meet physically before starting to work together, use word docs, blogs, video conferencing, remote controls, wikis, mailing-lists, forums, emails, phones, instant messaging systems, etc. Use whatever tool you like but share knowledge permanently!
• Make sure you have validated metrics and indicators in all these project areas: quality, speed, integration, communication and maintenance.
• Break the “us” and “them” syndrome.
• Make sure the French team is aware of the fact that their attitudes might appear arrogant.
• Make sure the Indian team knows that the French make efforts for their attitudes to be less arrogant.
• Evangelise permanently on agile methods: AOSD is more a state of mind than a process and it should be fully understood by all the project stakeholders.

There you go dear readership. I hope you’re getting a grasp of how much I enjoyed attending my first Project Management Institute event..and its debriefing cocktail where I got to meet with very sharp-minded people, with very diverse backgrounds.