Build, Buy, or Align?

As a Technical Architect, one of my responsibilities is to set the technical direction for my domain. A common decision that I have to make is related to determining the best approach for providing my business partner with a new capability. Each time I do this, I must decide whether to build that new capability, purchase that capability (which could mean a commercial off the shelf product [COTS] or acquiring a vendor service), or aligning with another company to partner building out the new capability together in a mutually beneficial way. This post will discuss the pros and cons of each approach that will hopefully help you understand when each situation may warrant one choice or the other. 

Build

This is perhaps the default approach most people go with. It allows for complete control of your desired capabilities, because you are custom building it. Much like building a custom home, if you want something, you can build it how you want. If you want to build a slide that goes from your second story into your living room, you absolutely can. The world is your oyster and the only limit is your imagination. This can be very helpful if you have specific requirements or a unique offering you are building out. The downside is if you build it, you have to maintain it. That includes any changes in requirements or regulations. You must make changes to stay up with the competition and your business partner. You also can stay ahead of your competitors by building your own capabilities, so it is a double edge sword. Another reason why you may opt for building a solution is because you are enhancing an existing solution you have already built. 

Buy

The buy option is just that. Instead of building the capability, you pay another company to either build the capability for you or you purchase the software they have already built and use it (with or without customizations). The advantage of going with this option is you don't have to build the capability and oftentimes means that your business partner will be able to utilize that capability much faster than if you built it yourselves. Another reason why you might opt for this option is because the capability you need is not a core competency of your business or you are not trying to differentiate yourselves with that product (for example you would likely not build your own mail client, but would likely just purchase MS Outlook). Another reason to buy, might be because the vendor has a "secret sauce" such as modeling technique or optimization rules that you want to take advantage of. The disadvantage is you get just what you bought, no more, no less. If the feature doesn't match what you want, you are beholden to the vendor to determine when and how to accomplish what you need. Oftentimes you also have a maintenance and/or support cost for the life of owning that product. This can however be beneficial if you are looking to standardize on that capability. 

Align

The align option is perhaps a bit more nuanced and is probably a mixture of build and buy, but since it has its own unique combination of pros and cons, I wanted to call it out separately. The align model speaks to a mutual relationship between you and another vendor or service provider to build out a capability that can benefit both companies. The alignment option may not be feasible for smaller sized companies, but large enterprises are often able to partner with other organizations. The benefit of this relationship is that you can utilize the power and creativity from the employees and competencies of each company as well as (sometimes) share the cost of developing the solution. The downside is you must be in alignment with each other's goals as well and fully understand what each side brings to the table, as well as set clear expectations. 

Regardless of which approach you decide to take, take these approaches into consideration as you evaluate your options. 

Note: You may ask how the "Cloud" fits into this. That is outside the scope of this article, primarily because I could easily quadruple the length of this post explaining the different types of providers, not to mention the trade offs. Perhaps that will be the topic of a future post. :)