are your contracting requirements met by traditional approaches?
Are you frustrated by having to select between time & materials (T&M) or fixed fee (FF)? I am.
I don’t want to choose between:
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service provider AND customer for contracting delivery risk;
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fixed scope AND flexible scope in a contract;
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committed project plan AND best efforts commitment; and
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competitive on scope AND competitive on resourcing to ensure value.
I require:
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joint accountability - to have joint accountable for overall performance with individual accountabilities. Where the service provider (SP) is under the same pressure to complete on time within budget as me. i.e. if I have to pay more for the committed scope and I want SP to feel the same pain I do. AND if I pay less for committed scope, SP increases their profit margin;
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agility - to introduce learnings as part of the project journey. But have hard delivery commitments for that journey. For example to be able to use a narrow build test to inform the design and the rest of the project. Then make a hard joint commitment to deliver that informed scope;
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dependable plans - to have planning predictability from joint commitments. i.e. for project scope. Also to have short-term operational high predictability for smaller batches of work; and
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value - to have competitive pressure on pricing for project scope and resources.
What are the key features of the contracted relationship you require?
The other requirement is a collaborative frame for contracting rather than an adversarial one. Please see posting: Adversarial nature of traditional contracting - this discusses why traditional contracting (T&M and fixed fee) considered part of an adversarial system. It explores why we need a system that drives collaboration.
See other postings to discover more:
when to use traditional and collaborative contracting methods?
introducing collaborative contracting
- we outline key features of collaborative contracting.