Outsourcing is an arrangement in which one company provides services for another company that could also be or usually have been provided in-house. Outsourcing is a trend that is becoming more common in information technology and other industries for services that have usually been regarded as intrinsic to managing a business. In some cases, the entire information management of a company is outsourced, including planning and business analysis as well as the installation, management, and servicing of the network and workstations. Outsourcing can range from the large contract in which a company like IBM manages IT services for a company like Xerox to the practice of hiring contractors and temporary office workers on an individual basis.

Business owners tend to spend a lot of time and money researching and purchasing hardware and software. They feel the need to control their IT capabilities in-house and will often spend aggressively to do so. However, there is another way.

Giving up hands-on control of technology allows you to concentrate on your core business instead of managing IT, and that can have a big impact on your bottom line.

A web developer is responsible for programming the functionality of a web site. So while a requirements analyst is tasked with determining what a web site should do, the web developer figures out how it is going to do it and then writes the necessary programming code. Much of this programming code is "behind the scenes" and not visible to the user.

However, a web developer may also be responsible for the code that the user sees. This is the HTML/DHTML and Javascript that make up most of the web pages you interact with in your web browser.

A web designer is similar to a graphic designer. The term web designer is used to describe a web developer, but really a web designer focuses on the user interface. They are responsible for layout, color palettes, and sometimes usability. Web designers often develop some programming skills to enable them to include certain features in the interface such as roll-overs or dynamic menus.

A database administrator (DBA) is similar to a database developer or designer except that the DBA's key responsibility is ensuring that a database is available at all to the users and programs that need it. This includes making backups and archiving data. It also includes on-going monitoring to ensure that the database is responding to requests quickly. Sometimes the DBA has some hardware knowledge so that the appropriate servers can be purchased so that the database's performance is not impacted by hardware bottlenecks.

The business analyst is skilled at working with end-users to determine what their needs are. Often, the business analyst has some technical experience which is useful in determining if a user's requests are feasible. Note that the business analyst is more than just a glorified note taker as he is also responsible for drilling down in to each business requirement to ensure that what is being asked is actually what is needed. Often a user thinks a particular feature is needed when in fact it isn't. Similarly, a user may assume that a particular feature will be included when it hasn't been specified anywhere.

It is also the business analysts role to translate what the user is asking for into a technical form that the client/server programmer or web developer can understand.

A project manager is a facilitator. The ideal project manager does whatever it takes to ensure that the members of the software project team can do their work. This means working with management to ensure they provide the resources and support required as well as dealing with team issues that are negatively impacting a team's productivity. The project manager must possess a combination of skills including the ability to ask penetrating questions, identify unstated assumptions, and resolve personnel conflicts along with more systematic management skills.

The actions of a project manager should be almost unnoticeable and when a project is moving along smoothly people are sometimes tempted to question the need for a project manager. However, when you take the skilled project manager out of the mix, the project is much more likely to miss deadlines and exceed budgets.

The project manager is the one who is responsible for making decisions in such a way that risk is controlled and uncertainty minimized. Every decision made by the project manager should ideally be directly benefit the project.

On small projects, the project manager will likely deal directly with all members of the software development team. On larger projects, there is often a lead developer, lead graphic designer, lead analyst, etc. that report directly to the project manager.