Every once in a while I hear the question regarding the ‘most proven’ or ‘best practice’ for writing procurement RFPs or agreements. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all, and it can really get to you when trying to research what’s useful and what’s not.
The most effective way for improving your practice is to set the priorities first:
- What’s your biggest process risk (or least control) when using software?
- Who are your vendors with highest financial impact?
At the crossroad of these two aspects, you should evolve your effort for improvement: Search the web and respected blogs. On this one, you find my research papers in my archive on the right panel of this blog. One of my favorites is the paper on metrics: Eight Criteria for Evaluating Software License Metrics 2011
Once you have made some improvements, do not forget: As licensing is a moving target, you need to re-calibrate your templates regularly, review them at least once a year. Otherwise, the vendors will surprise you with new gotchas that you don’t want to pay for! If you like to be in a comfort zone, you may use License12 services for contract repository. It includes QA processes that can protect you from unexpected risk.