"Nothing dramatically changes, but I think everything ratchets up a step," says Howard Melnick, senior vice president of information resources application services at Marriott International. He and IT project lead Kent Petty highlight three areas where managers of outsourced projects need to be a step above their peers.

Communication: "To influence someone remotely is different than when you're sitting right here and drawing them a picture," Petty says. "It gets back to trust and doing what you said you were going to do. You need a project manager who doesn't have to have everyone under his thumb to influence them and get the work done."

Cultural sensitivity: "You need to not only understand the cultural differences between the two organizations, but also cultural differences around the world," Melnick says.

But more mundane differences are also important -- such as those between Marriott's Bethesda, Md., headquarters and the Accenture team's home base in Atlanta, Petty says. "It's as simple as knowing that Marriott has holidays that Accenture may not have. It's knowing that you can't read body language on the phone, knowing that traffic patterns are different in Atlanta so sometimes they're late or we're late for a call. You need to consider all that and be flexible."

Business know-how: Technical skills are a given, Petty says, "but we need a certain amount of business acumen. The business leadership here doesn't have to understand what I'm doing, but I have to understand what they're doing and why -- and the downstream and upstream impacts."