> Dunno how you apply that to an organization, but maybe sending skilled workers as a kind of non-comissioned officer could work. Who knows.

The most successful engagements I've had with contracting firms have been when we've shelled out for a team manager and a software architect (in addition to the number of straight developers we want).

The software architect builds a solid understanding of our solution space, and from then on helps translate requirements into terms their engineers are familiar with, and provides code reviews to ensure their contributions are in line with the project goals. The team manager knows how to handle the day-to-day reporting, making sure everyone is on task, escalates blockers over the fence to our engineers and managment, etc.

Without those two roles from the contracting firm's side, I find that timezones and cultural mismatches (engineering culture, that is) pretty much erase the impact of the additional engineering headcount when adding contractors.