Making better build vs buy decisions
summary
A concrete decision framework names the tradeoffs and measures them: differentiation, security and compliance, cost and margin, reliability and scalability, criticality and roadmap time. Run an RFP and a vendor shootout against a build estimate, scope the epic with 3–6 month goals and spike a tracer bullet to measure engineering and run costs. Prefer vendors with customers at similar scale, check velocity, changelogs and references, list vendor non‑negotiables (e g SOC2/HIPAA) and compare total cost and outage risk.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Build vs buy decisions
- 1:06Why build vs buy matters
- 2:31Core vs application outsourcing
- 3:33Framework for app layer decisions
- 6:47Tips for build vs buy process
- 9:15What to look for in a vendor
- 10:41Q&A
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