CIO Wisdom II: More Best Practices

Introduction

In my role as a litigator and trial lawyer, I have performed autopsies on the carcasses of scores of failed IT procurement and outsourcing relationships. In my role as a legal counselor and contract negotiator, I have helped numerous clients identify and avoid or minimize problems that could have otherwise arisen in the course of their IT procurement or outsourcing relationships. Each of these relationships had unique features. However, a number of key areas consistently arose as potential failure points, which the successful companies were able to avoid. In the following discussion I offer the benefit of my experience as to what can go wrong and how to avoid these failure points.

First, I define a few key concepts. For purposes ...