> Regarding nudging: Ask when something will be done (with units of work that are small enough to make this viable), and get them to commit to it. If they repeatedly don't deliver, and fail to communicate the problems, then you know you have a problem.
That's what we've been doing almost for a year now and many failed repeatedly. Secondly when you give them strict deadlines and this kind of tracking I noticed that they might not deliver the best but they'll just fix/do something quickly and in a dirty way. Stuff like programming and Q/A testing is not easy confirm. Generally this sort of stuff bit us in the ass after months and ended up clients to be unhappy.
There are many automated ways to do this too. Check out Parasoft Concerto. This system does it by managing by exception. Meaning that if an artifact is not where is should be the worker gets notified. http://www.parasoft.com/concerto
That's what we've been doing almost for a year now and many failed repeatedly. Secondly when you give them strict deadlines and this kind of tracking I noticed that they might not deliver the best but they'll just fix/do something quickly and in a dirty way. Stuff like programming and Q/A testing is not easy confirm. Generally this sort of stuff bit us in the ass after months and ended up clients to be unhappy.