Five mistakes teams make with build versus buy

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. These are the ones we run into repeatedly when we audit build versus buy.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

Warning signs

• Treating it as a launch task rather than an ongoing one
• Assuming someone else already owns it
• Build what makes you different, buy the rest
• Off-the-shelf is cheaper until the customisation starts
• Never checking whether the fix actually worked

Count ongoing maintenance in the build column. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

A reasonable first step

In practice

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Three things worth confirming about build versus buy before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Count ongoing maintenance in the build column — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.