Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, is quoted as saying "Five great programmers can completely outperform 1,000 mediocre programmers." In this talk, we present results from new scientific studies that demonstrate a tremendous difference in productivity and quality among developers and providers that looks similar (e.g. with good cv's and excellent references from previous clients). We argue that common developer/provider selection mechanisms are not good enough and suggest better ways of identify the best developers/providers. We will also present results on the typically under-valued effect of a competent client, the difference between outsourcing countries in delivering quality code and how to structure your code to reduce the need for high(est) competence Magne Jørgensen: Professor at Simula Research Laboratory and University of Oslo. Advisor at Scienta. Promoting evidence-based software engineering. Research focus on management of complex projects and estimation of software development projects. Experience from software development and management in Telenor and Storebrand.