Ccfman is spot-on. I know of a company which wanted to outsource a major database development because the in-house database was limited in its capabilities and the company didn't have the internal resources to do the necessary development. The company doing the development was never given a specification other than a verbal chat of what was required. The new database delivery date was quoted as 6 months from start but in reality it took over 2 years with ridiculous numbers of changes and corrections, many of which had to be paid for on top of the initial cost because they hadn't been specified initially. It was a classic example of how not to run a project.