It is rare in today’s flat world to find important projects that are being completed totally
in-house. Outsourcing or contracting significant segments of project work to
other companies is commonplace. For example, nine states attempting to unify the
accounting of all their state agencies did not have the internal resources to implement
such a large project. Hence, project teams were formed consisting of personnel
from software, hardware, and accounting firms to implement the projects. Small
high-tech firms outsource research to determine what features customers value in
new products they are developing. Even industry giants such as Microsoft and Intel
commonly hire independent firms to test new products they are developing