There are many projects where the build vs buy decision itself is politicized. Political rifts between business and IT is a story that is just as old as business software itself.

Super common scenario:

* The business thinks IT is too slow to implement, and doesn't understand business needs

* IT thinks the business changes priority too much and doesn't even understand their own business processes, and it's leading to technical debt because the demands of the business are half-baked

* So, the business brings in a consultant who says they will do everything they want, without any push-back, in half the time

Two years later, the outsourced work is half-finished and what has been delivered is near-total garbage. All the best engineers have left the team and the business is scrambling to hire someone competent to cleanup the mess.

Sometimes a company with a competent IT department hires a bad consultant. Sometimes a company with an awful IT department hires a good consultant. Roll a dice.

Yeah... I don't really subscribe to this viewpoint. I think it's a meme at this point. "Politicized" is a trope in my opinion.

Are you saying that you don't think office politics ...exists?

I think it is important to avoid figurative language and stereotypes and develop an argument based on specific examples. To clarify my original comment, the assumption is that if you have to have clout to bring in the consultant (either by fiat or consensus) that does not absolve negative consequences nor provide political cover if a project fails.

Nobody in this thread suggested it would absolve negative consequences or provide political cover if a project fails.

It gives someone the political cover to make changes beyond their typical power that they knew were necessary.

Many large organizations are compartmentalized into divisions that act almost as independent sub-organizations. In these organizations, someone might have plenty of clout/budget/authority to bring in a consultant in their division, but not enough clout to convince a cross-divisional decision maker without some help.

For example: The President of MegaCorp North America thinks the Director of MegaCorp Widget Sales is whiny and asks for too many budget increases without a plan to the President's standard. Meanwhile, the reality is that everyone in MegaCorp Widget Sales knows they need this new piece of software. So, the Director of MegaCorp Widget Sales uses $100,000 of his existing budget to bring in some consultants to do a strategy plan for phase 1. Those consultants write up the same things that the Director and his employees have been asking for, but they put it in a shiny proposal with plenty of buzzwords. This satisfies the President sufficiently enough to award the budget increase for the phase 2 implementation project.

Again, I don’t subscribe to this viewpoint which was my original comment. You can dress it up with hypotheticals but I don’t agree. Regardless of success or failure I think that “political cover” is a stereotype and not useful. Roll a dice as you say.