Supplier Reviews

The following is a sample agenda for a supplier review.

Objectives for Review

• Agree a plan with supplier to solve key issues
• All ownership, processes and contact points well understood and up-to-date
• Understand where the supplier is going, their strategy and roadmap

Areas to Consider

• What areas does the business want to see improved; what are the pain points with this supplier?
• Number of new features delivered (e.g., new products and/or services made available, functional improvements, elements of previous supplier review agenda delivered).  Consider both velocity and acceleration of deliveries.
• General process improvements (e.g., escalation of issues back into supplier)
• Review major product/service failures and downtime events – root cause?
• Review product/service roadmap, both current and from last time.  Assess delivery ability against stated roadmap as a way to evaluate currently presented roadmap
• Evaluate other customers of the supplier - their situations, requests; how are they driving the suppliers strategy and priority choices?
• Roadmap of technical/internals
• Upgrade plans
• Review who owns what and escalation details; general review of support and ability to escalate
• Review recent and related project retrospectives - any issues to progress with supplier?
• Can the supply/delivery chain be optimized? Come into session with a summary of the delivery chain, owners and timing - what can be tuned?
• Supplier costs summary.  Any invoice issues.
• Alternatives to supplier

Output of Review

If this is a major review, consider setting up a wiki page that pulls together all the information related to the review, e.g., specification, bug lists, retrospectives, API specs,

Documentation updates, e.g., a supplier support change names and phone numbers

Action items between now and the next review.