- Discuss the right composition of the problem-solving team:
- Decide on the number of members of the problem-solving team. Specify functions and roles of its individual members. Give reasons for your choices.
- Do you prefer appointing its leader or keeping the team self-managed? Explain why.
- How will your coordinate your activities, make your decisions and handle your occasional disagreements? How will you organise your reporting to Board of Governors?
- How will you measure each team member's performance? Do you prefer measuring the performance of each individual and/or of the group as a whole? Why?
- What sort of individual and/or group rewards do you recommend? Explain your reasons.
- Presume that very few of the team members meet with each other. What methods do you recommend to increase their mutual trust and open communication?
Specify the implementation plan.
- Elaborate into your goals in terms of:
- Purchasing/leasing/outsourcing hardware versus purchasing/licensing software (including its multilingual versions).
- User and administrator training.
- Your priorities in all above issues.
- The forms of collaboration of your company with the supplier; ways of communication and your liaison officer(s).
- Set up deadlines and responsibilities of the problem-solving team's members.
- Prepare your negotiation strategy with your suppliers (see items 2.1 and 2.2). Anticipate your opponent's position concerning:
- To what degree its position to the above items might correspond to your interests.
- Is your opponent eager to accept your proposal? Why or why not? What points of your proposal are potentially difficult to negotiate for him?
- What sort of penalties will you ask for violating the conditions of the agreement?
- Who will supposedly represent the opponent? What is his/her/their decisional power in the partner's organisation?
- Develop a list of actions you might conceivably take if no agreement is reached (i.e. so-called Plan B).