Outsourcing Project Checklist
This is a practical guide to building a project checklist for an outsourcing project — a step-by-step checklist covering the project from start to finish, adapted to the realities of outsourcing a function to an external provider.
What a Project Checklist is
A project checklist is a step-by-step checklist covering the project from start to finish. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Project Management Checklist. On an outsourcing project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for an Outsourcing project
Outsourcing projects live or die on outsourcing a function to an external provider. A well-built project checklist gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how outsourcing projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- Initiation checks
- Planning checks
- Execution checks
- Closure checks
Outsourcing-specific considerations
Tailor the project checklist to the risks that most often derail outsourcing projects:
- Knowledge transfer
- Service-level definition
- People impact
Example
On a real outsourcing project, the project checklist would be shaped by outsourcing a function to an external provider. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — knowledge transfer, service-level definition, people impact — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.