A Study On The Management Of Microsoft Software Vendor Evaluation Project

With the development of the software industry, software outsourcing has been widely accepted and adopted by most companies. As a leading company in software industry, Microsoft is going with the tide and has developed several outsourcing partners in China and more and more testing and development projects have been outsourced to the mainland. In order to help vendors improve their delivery and management capability, Microsoft Strategic Partnership Group (SPG) and procurement department initiate the Microsoft Software Vendor Evaluation Project to evaluate vendor’s overall performance. The project collects comprehensive feedback from project owners of around 400 Microsoft projects through online survey and interviews. The evaluation result is reviewed by project owners, SPG, procurement department, IT department and vendor representatives via face to face meetings.The paper analyzes the characteristics of the process and project management of vendor evaluation project based on project management theory. It also summarizes the common issues in vendor evaluation projects. After the elaboration of the implementation of project management as well as the effect in terms of time management, human resource management, communication management and quality management, the paper provides specific corrective actions for continuous improvement.The research result of this paper may represent a useful effort for similar vendor evaluation management based on multiple projects.