IT Sub-Contracting: Money for no efforts?
These days it is second nature for the Deloittes, Accentures, and BearingPoints to outsource their application development and/or support tasks to smaller software solution providers or sub-contractors.

By the virtue of the term – sub-contractor – one might think that sub-contractors are bound by a contract that would guarantee their tenure; if not their passion for the project. The caveat to this thought is that the vendor can only be held accountable, and not the employee who works for that vendor. This is due to the inherent nature of the sub-contractor business model. And therefore it has been realised that most vendors can be treated as trusted solution providers but very few as trusted business allies.

Managing sub-contractor teams can be a complex task by itself; leave alone the delivery aspect. At times, there can be more give than take to get a simple job done. Since they are really nonemployees , traditional retention strategies cannot be applied here. Also it has been observed that due to visa restrictions, many sub-contractors chose to stick with their companies, despite lower pay. The moment they get their green cards, it becomes extremely difficult to retain them.

Focusing on what managers can control, here are five rules that have proven to be beneficial while managing sub-contractors:
more its not always that easy !!