Relationship management in IT Outsourcing (ITO) is today an important concern in many organizations. In the review of research literature regarding relationship management in IT outsourcing we have found a lot research on best practices but not on key factors. Therefore our research goal has looked to find the key factors in managing IT outsourcing relationships that are including the best practices in ITO relationships. The results of this research has due to a list of six key factors that includes the best practices that were elicited from the IT outsourcing relationships research and which were applied in the case of three organizations in Sweden. The analysis of the results has shown both deviations as well as compliances between the theory and practices, but also deviations between the views of these key factors in the studied organizations.