Effective knowledge transfer plan:

how to move IT outsourcing projects

to a new vendor

By Marta Hlova • October 03, 2019

How to ensure the smooth knowledge Unshared knowledge costs money. In

transfer in IT outsourcing? We share our particular, this is true of IT outsourcing
tips for the effective project transition projects. When moving from one
when switching a vendor. They are vendor to another, knowledge loss
backed by our experience in exchanging could result in lots of organizational
project and product knowledge with waste when the whole process gets
a number of companies we’ve worked reworked from scratch. Having a robust
with including Lebara, Gogo, Fluke, knowledge transfer plan could make
and Travelport. If you are thinking the whole journey easy and safe.
about moving to another vendor, but
knowledge transfer issues hold you HAVE A QUESTION?
back, here come our step by step
SPEAK TO AN EXPERT
recommendations for the successful
knowledge transfer in IT outsourcing.
WHITEPAPER • Effective knowledge transfer plan: how to move IT outsourcing projects to a new vendor

Key steps in the knowledge transfer plan you

should keep in mind

Much of the project knowledge exists in doc- stages in the knowledge transfer plan don’t
umentation, but the most valuable knowl- change. It all starts with a demo and the investi-
edge still resides in people’s heads. Explicit gation phase and ends with setting up the envi-
knowledge that is recorded is just the tip of ronments, taking over business-as-usual (BAU),
the iceberg. Tacit knowledge based on a per- and the first successful release.
son’s experience, by contrast, is the most hard-
to-transfer asset. According to the Panopto N-iX has a proven track record of successfully
Workplace Knowledge and Productivity Re- delivering projects acquired both from clients
port, 51% of the average employee’s workplace and their previous vendors. From our experi-
knowledge comes from experience ence, we have realized that knowledge transfer
fails when it is ad hoc and informal, and it suc-
There are different ways of knowledge trans- ceeds when it is strategic and methodical. Be-
fer flows. It can be performed either from a cli- low, you will find a plan for knowledge transfer
ent to a vendor, which is the best-case scenar- in IT outsourcing projects based on the lessons
io, or from a previous vendor to a new vendor, we learned through years of cooperation with
which is a bit more challenging if you don’t have clients across the globe.
a robust plan. Regardless of the case, the key

5%
Explicit knowledge
• Data, information
• Documents
• Records
• Files

95%
Tacit knowledge
• Experience
• Thinking
• Competence
• Commitment
• Deed

2
WHITEPAPER • Effective knowledge transfer plan: how to move IT outsourcing projects to a new vendor

Knowledge transfer in IT outsourcing

STEP #1 Define what knowledge to Organizational level (vendor-to-vendor or

collect client-to-vendor)
Documents:
Determining what information you need to • Sensitive data transition
gather is the backbone of the effective knowl- • Information on source code ownership
edge transfer plan. Here is a checklist of essen- • Product Regulatory Compliance (if relevant)
tial knowledge items to collect taken from the • Non-disclosure agreement (if relevant)
perspective of three different levels: organiza- • Partnership termination agreement with
tional level, team level, and individual level. a previous vendor (if relevant)

3
WHITEPAPER • Effective knowledge transfer plan: how to move IT outsourcing projects to a new vendor

Team level (team members-to-team are obligatory to understand the logic behind
members) the code and some well-established best prac-
Source code: tices when moving from one vendor to another.

• Repository URLs with access details

• Description of key algorithms
• Specification of classes and app’s layers
STEP #2 Define people who transfer
and receive knowledge
Internal processes and workflows:
• Deployment guidelines, system’s configu- Once you know what knowledge to collect, it’s
ration and installation, operating instruc- time to determine the go-to persons in  your
tions, troubleshooting, changelog, and bug vendor’s organization who could provide the
tracker data necessary info on each level. For example,
• Software development workflow on  the organizational level, it is necessary
• Branching strategy to speak to a Delivery Manager and represen-
• Software development tools and tech- tatives from the engagement, legal, and finance
niques departments. On the team level, it is essential
• CI/CD best practices to contact a CTO, a project manager, a Scrum
Access to the systems used team-wide: Master, etc. And when it comes to a knowledge
• Access to the existing environment and transfer from an expert to an expert, these are
third-party systems usually meetings between QA engineers, UX/
UI specialists, software developers, DevOps,
Documents:
business analysts, software architects, etc. It’s
• Description of business requirements important to understand critical tasks an in-
• Project roadmap dividual oversees, their importance level, and
• Software architecture documentation possible hidden pitfalls.
• Database structure design
• Design files: mockups, graphics
• User stories STEP #3 Collect knowledge items
• Test cases
Having non-stop meetings assuming that your
new development team will be able to grasp
Individual level (expert-to-expert) all the information isn’t the best way to en-
sure knowledge transfer. Important knowl-
An exchange of knowledge on the individual lev- edge should be captured and properly stored.
el is the most important part of the knowledge If it is a meeting, then it should have an agenda
transfer process. Inheriting an IT outsourcing and meeting notes or other files that you could
project is like receiving the keys to a room you further work on. But there is a variety of other
don’t know how to walk into. A big part of the knowledge transfer methods, and here we’ve
knowledge is the code itself. But it’s one thing to outlined those that prove to be the most effec-
know what the code does and it’s another thing tive for knowledge transfer in IT outsourcing.
to understand what hidden landmines might be
in it. Thus, one-on-one meetings, tech talks be- • Technical documentation: spreadsheets, how-
tween software engineers, DevOps, architects to guides, presentations, KB articles, etc.

4
WHITEPAPER • Effective knowledge transfer plan: how to move IT outsourcing projects to a new vendor

• On-site training for a focus team The next criteria against which you can assess
• Live training for a focus team the success of the knowledge transfer is your
• Q&A sessions team velocity. The main source of inefficien-
• Tech talks cy in the knowledge transfer in IT outsourc-
• Live demos ing comes when a new software development
• One-on-one meetings team starts reinventing the wheel and dupli-
cating the previous team’s work. The report by
Panopto claims that more than 70% of employ-
STEP #4 Measure the results against ees duplicate existing work because they can’t
success criteria reach people responsible for it or they have no
idea that someone else has already done it.
The final step is to assess the effectiveness of
your knowledge transfer plan. First of all, you Solving project-specific problems through trial
can analyze how quickly your team has man- and error method is also a huge waste of time.
aged to get started with the project: set up the If possible, it’s better to acquire established
Development, QA, Staging and Production en- best practices from a client’s team or a previ-
vironments and get access to the systems used ous vendor’s team. In the survey, on average
team-wide to be able to deploy releases and employees report spending 8 hours per week
debug. Please note that the shortest period roaming online for information and reworking
within which it is possible to effectively finish an existing task or a process.
the knowledge transfer process is no less than The successful knowledge transfer will save
one full successful deployment into production you money and streamline the productivity of
by a new team. your new software development team.

Knowledge transfer process at N-iX projects

We have been refining our knowledge transfer augmentation model of cooperation, and most
plan for more than 15 years, since the partner- of the software development was done on the
ship with our first clients. It has been tested by client’s side. Now, we have a big development
time and our clients report its effectiveness as team of more than 100 engineers who work on
it meets their success criteria. The knowledge multiple products for Lebara in Kyiv, Lviv, and
transfer plan is an integral part of cooperation Minsk offices. We have managed to success-
with the majority of our clients, including Leba- fully acquire knowledge from the client’s team
ra, Fluke, Gogo, and Travelport. in London. And today, most of the tech leads,
project managers, and prevailing tech exper-
Our partnership with Lebara, one of Europe’s tise and tech-related decision making are on
fastest-growing mobile companies, has started our side.
in 2014. Back then, we worked under a staff

5
WHITEPAPER • Effective knowledge transfer plan: how to move IT outsourcing projects to a new vendor

Fluke Corporation, a leading manufacturer

of industrial test, measurement, and diagnos- WRAP-UP
tic equipment, started cooperation with N-iX
with a small development team of 8 specialists. The success of knowledge transfer in IT
Within 2 years, it has increased to 22 members. outsourcing depends on several aspects:
Thanks to the effective knowledge transfer people, processes, and a product. With-
plan in place, N-iX team easily integrated with out the proper understanding of what the
the client’s other remote teams located in the product does, how it operates, and what
USA (Everett, Florida), India (Bangalore), and people are responsible for specific tasks,
Ireland (Dublin) and ensured successful deliv- it is impossible for a vendor to deliver on
ery of the products. the client’s expectations.

Gogo, a North American market leader in in-

flight connectivity, has teamed up with N-iX Our knowledge transfer plan covers all the
to expand its development capabilities. N-iX important types of information you need
engineers started the project with initiating to gather when moving to a new vendor.
a  knowledge transfer process that ensured Not sure about how to build a knowledge
speed development and high productivity of transfer plan in your particular case? See
software engineers. The N-iX team has provid- if we can help you.
ed end-to-end software development of the
cloud-based platform which collects data from CONTACT US
more than 20 different sources and found the
reasons for ill-performance and equipment fail-
ures, reducing the number of not-fault-founds
by 8 times.

Travelport Locomote partnered with N-iX in

2017 to enhance its existing corporate travel
platform and enter new markets. The N-iX team
has established close cooperation with the cli-
ent and other distributed teams located in dif-
ferent countries, including Australia, the UK,
and Romania. The knowledge transfer plan has
helped to integrate coding practices between
different distributed teams and get new teams
of the client up and running quickly.

6
N-iX is an Eastern European provider of software development services with 1000+
expert software engineers onboard that power innovative technology businesses.
Since 2002 we have formed strategic partnerships with a variety of global industry
leaders including OpenText, Novell, Lebara, Currencycloud and over 50 other medium
and large-scale businesses. With delivery centers in Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, and
Belarus, we deliver excellence in software engineering and deep expertise in a range of
verticals including finance, healthcare, hospitality, telecom, energy and enterprise content
management helping our clients to innovate and implement technology transformations.

www.n-ix.com Find us on:

[email protected]
+380 322 295 767

Ukraine USA
32 Storozhenka St. 9500 Koger Blvd. N., Ste.
Lviv 79018 Ukraine 105 St. Petersburg, FL
Florida 33702 USA
15-B Leiptsyzka St.
Kyiv 01015 Ukraine

Sweden Malta
1 Västra Kanalgatan St. 157 Archbishop St.
Malmo 211 43 Sweden Valletta VLT 1440

ST. PETERSBURG, USA