Vendor Management
Vendor management is a systematic approach to overseeing and optimizing relationships with third-party suppliers, service providers, and technology partners. It involves processes for selecting, onboarding, monitoring, and evaluating vendors to ensure they meet contractual obligations, deliver value, and align with organizational goals. This discipline is critical in software development for managing dependencies on external tools, platforms, and services.
Developers should learn vendor management to effectively handle dependencies on third-party APIs, cloud services, libraries, and tools, which are common in modern software projects. It helps mitigate risks like vendor lock-in, service disruptions, and security vulnerabilities, while ensuring cost-efficiency and compliance. Use cases include managing cloud infrastructure providers (e.g., AWS, Azure), software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools, and open-source library dependencies in development workflows.