Working with contractors

External specialists can help fill capability gaps, provide expertise and accelerate delivery. Before engaging contractors or suppliers, make sure you understand the skills you need and how knowledge will be retained within your team.

Before you recruit anyone from outside the NSW Government, see if you have any team members who can develop these skills. Build capability within your team wherever possible. When external expertise is needed, focus on specific capability gaps and avoid arrangements that create long-term dependency.

Core selection criteria

• Experience delivering similar digital services
• Willingness to share knowledge and support capability uplift
• Ability to share knowledge with permanent staff in the delivery team
• How they define, measure and maintain quality products and services
• Experience delivering iteratively and responding to user feedback

Working with contractors

You should treat contractors and permanent team members equally.

Contractors should work in your office for most of their time and sit with permanent staff. It's important for a delivery team to share a space because:

• working closely together can improve communication, reduce misunderstandings and support faster decision-making.
• there's more informal communication and learning
• it's easier to establish a shared Agile culture.

Transferring knowledge

Make sure you have a plan to pass knowledge from contractors to the rest of your team. This is particularly important when you move from one phase to another, or if you change supplier.

Knowledge transfer should happen throughout delivery, not just at the end of a contract.

• Encourage pairing – you might need to adjust people's workloads so they have time to do this.
• Organise sessions for contractors to share their knowledge or experiences.
• Document key decisions, processes and technical approaches.
• Involve permanent staff in design, delivery and operational activities.

More project planning guides