Best Practices for IT Outsourcing

The best practices model, CMMI for Acquisition, is the result of several years' work by GM, Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, the U.S. government, and IT service providers Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HP) and CapGemini to develop a standards-based way to acquire and manage services and software.  The acquisition model defines, among many other things, how to initiate and manage a process for procuring products and services, how to work with a supplier to define project requirements, and how to execute project oversight.

The developers of CMMI-ACQ said word of the standard is just now getting out, so other organizations and companies haven't yet signed up to adopt it. This model may also have application for the procurement of other unique services e.g. engineering services.