Newsflash: outsourced labor is cheap.

It’s so cheap that your CFO (generally a serious guy) has been seen around the office giggling randomly and uncontrollably (this is especially embarrassing at board meetings).

It’s so cheap that you are saving thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands a month. And your team is now twice as big as it was before. Which means that you, the CIO, can finally do all that stuff on your list.

You can integrate that cool (and unnecessary) Google Maps interface with the employee directory. You can get three teams to work on the exact same project and vote the losers off Survivor-style. You can implement a full-fledged CMS to support your 23 page corporate website. You can get a team of six to research the FaceBook API (despite the fact that you make ERP software).

You can. But you shouldn’t.

Yes, the additional labor required to create that new stock-ticker Vista Gadget is inexpensive. But don’t ignore the true costs of side projects. I’m not just talking about the managers, infrastructure, and preparation time you will need locally to manage all of the additional work. You can probably handle that, given all the money you’re saving. I’m talking about trust.

Every new team situation begins with a period of mutual evaluation. You watch carefully, because you want to know if your new employees (or partners) are qualified. And, of course, your new team members want to find out how they are going to be managed.

Unfocused, open-ended side projects dilute trust. If the new mobile version of your website is not a business priority, your team is going to notice, no matter how many miles away their office is from corporate HQ. If you scrap that cool new Silverlight version of your UI after a team stayed up all week to get it done in time for a fake deadline, they will notice.

And, the next time you push them, they won’t work as hard. Which is too bad, because eventually, you are going to want to get something important done.