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How do we know as engineering leaders how to approach when to build a solution versus buy one?
In today’s devtools landscape, we’ve seen a huge proliferation of products to outsource much of the underlying services and infrastructure needed to build and operate a complex product at scale. Stripe for payments, LaunchDarkly for feature flagging, Algolia for managed search, and WorkOS for SSO are some examples of products we might find ourselves looking at. But how do we know as engineering leaders how to approach when to build a solution versus buy one? Common wisdom may dictate that it’s as simple as “focussing on what’s core to your business” but the reality is more nuanced.
In this talk we’ll take a look at a decision-making framework we can employ as engineering leaders in order to help make better build-vs-buy decisions. We’ll apply this framework to some key real-world software decisions, taking a balanced look at the long-term impact of both directions. Ultimately, giving an actionable set of tips you can go away and use in your next process.
Along the way we’ll cover:
- How to run an effective build-vs-buy process (e.g. not just another biased RFP spreadsheet)
- How to collaborate across your product, security, and operations teams when assessing vendors
- A few integration horror stories from the trenches
