Do not try to do everything. Do one thing well.
Steve Jobs – Apple Founder

The videogame business is an example of an industry adopting project-based work and points to FOW. Casey O’Donnell, a game developer and game-studies professor at Michigan State University, says the videogame industry “is a decade ahead of where a lot of other industries are going.” 159

Story: Psyonix is a projectized organization and is typical of the FOW organization. Psyonix dreams up new games and even car designs. Each product requires software development and project management. The company uses a network of project contractors (middle ring of the Handy model) throughout the world to develop software, translate its games into foreign languages, conduct quality control, handle customer service, and transfer the software to new platforms. Psyonix in the meanwhile has amassed 25 million players in less than twoyears using the project work model.

The CEO of Psyonix says: “the smaller we can be the better.” Think lean. Think fast. Think agile. And most importantly, think profitable. Psyonix contractors are called its liquid workforce (middle ring). Why? They can be turned on and off like a faucet.

And both parties can benefit from this arrangement. Psyonix can scale as required by hiring layers of project managers, contractors, and subcontractors. And, contractors can make a lot of money and have the freedom of working on a temporary basis or on a project-by-project basis.160

Companies say the result is just-in-time work fueled with human capital. By outsourcing low-value work or renting high-value expertise needed for a short time, game makers like Psyonix focus on what they do best. Smaller companies such as high-tech startups are following this work model. For example, the company that designed the hit video game Rocket League which pits jet powered, race cars against one another in an online soccer match only has 81 employees.

Work Lesson Earned: Some organizations will be organized totally around core projects: “As outsourcing sweeps through almost every industry in the U.S., the videogame business looks a lot like the workplace of the future. A lean core of in-house employees focuses on the most important jobs, with the rest hired out to layers of contractors and subcontractors. Outside workers come and go based on project cycles.”161