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【正文】 s, where the evaluation is make difficult because of future uncertainties (. market growth and acceptance。 response of petitors ) decision trees or other types of probability based assessment tools may simplify investment decisios. Finally, for some types of investments or decisions (for example, the decision whether to invest immediately or defer), advanced techniques such as real options can be applied.　　Although this discussion has focused primarily on evaluating the benefit part of the quantitative evaluation, there are other difficulties in estimating the cost of IT projects, particualarly those involving software development. Existing models such as COCOMO of function points estimation are known to improve the ability to predict project length, staffing requirements and total costs, although they are k own to be systmeatically off by as much as 400%. However, the accuracy of these estimates can also be improved later in the project when specifications are well defined or by customizing the models to the experience of a particular organization. However, despite the fact that these tools and approaches are readily available many firms still utilize seat of the pants estimants or lock in schedules and cost estimants before the projects are fully defined.How Financial Firms Decide on Technology(Part Six)　Approving IT Projects　　Once a project has been evaluated and a formal project proposal exists, there are a variety of mechanisms that are used to determine which projects should be funded. Most institutions have some form of mittee structure, similar to capital budgeting mittees, which is responsible for evaluating, modifying and approving projects.　　Most of the previous literature on the management of IT has focused on the socalled IT steering mittee which is an executive level group, often prised of the heads of business units or their direct reports. The objective of this mittee is to ensure that IT strategy is aligned with business unit strategy, projects are coordinated across business units where there are possible synergies and to educate the business unit managers on the both the actual activities of the IT group and the potential IT opportunities. 　MakeBuy Decisions(Outsourcing)　　At the inception of any project, a firm has the choice of whether to utilize their internal resources in the IT department (insource) or utilize an outside vendor for any or all of a project(outsourcing). While the market for outsourced services has existed since sale of the first corporate puters, the size of the outsourcing market has grown dramatically in recent years and is expected to grow substantially. In 1997 the market for information technology outsourcing has been estimated at $ billion in the . and at $90 billion worldwide. Growth estimates of this market range from 15% to 25%.　　In general , an outside firm may be advantaged in providing a service previously produced internally, because of economies of scale, scope or specialization. By aggregating demands for multiple clients, vendors can smooth variations in demand increasing capacity utilization and reducing risk, make investments that trade larger fixed costs for lower variable costs, and have stronger incentives to invest in costreducing technology. By narrowly focusing on technology, they may be better able to attract, hire , manage and retain high quality personnel due to better ability to tailor management practices, career paths and incentive structures to a specific activity. The value of these benefis is tempered by explicit and implicit costs of using the market or some intermediate form of governance rather than vertical integration. These problems manifest themselves in three types of risk: shirking(underperformance in hardtomeasure tasks), poaching (misappropriaiton of shared resources ) and opportunistic renegotiation (exploitation of bargaining disadvantages in ongoing relationships) . Some authors have argued that in IT these risks are so severe that outsourcing has, overall, a poor value proposition. However , there are a number of very successful agreements and the growth in the market over the long term suggests that some economic benefits of outsourcing are present.　　In pratice, outsourcing can take many forms and the plexity of these arrangements is increasing. The simplest arrangement is the use of contract workers。 the worker is not employed by the firm, but is managed more or less as if they were an employee. This pratice is so mon in IT that the presence of contract employees is assumed to be a standard feature of IT departments. At the next level is selective outsourcing in which a firm outsources particular projects or parts of projects to an outside vendor. This is also quite mon in software development and technical support activities, although any welldefined task could presumably be outsourced in this way. Finally, the firm may choose to outsource the entire IT function, a practice that began in the late 1980s and has continued today. Hitt, Lorin M., Frei, Frances X. and Patrick T. Harker. (1999) How Financial Firms Decide on Technology, in Brookings/Wharton Papers on Financial Services:1999, Litan, Robert E. and Anthony M. Santomero, Eds. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 11 / 11