• No in-house software capability exists within the client’s organisation and it is important to maintain product continuity by having a single development team work on the application.
• The customer either has no existing software or does not wish to further develop or expand any existing applications.
• The client wishes to devolve much of the management responsibility for the project to a third party software team.

However, not every customer wishes to commission the writing of a complete software package. This will often be the situation, for example, where the customer has an in-house software team or wishes to add features to an existing package rather than totally replace it.