Agentic Engineering at Scale

Chapter 4. Buy Versus Build Versus Grow

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One of the most consequential decisions architects make is whether to outsource a new capability to a vendor or to take care of it within their own organization. This decision is so common and so significant that it has its own name—buy versus build. The trade-offs inherent in this decision are both economic and technical, and are therefore significantly impacted by cheap code.

Buying means that you select a vendor who has an existing software product and sign a contract with them. Their premade systems are known as commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS). You implement COTS by configuring it for your environment, connecting it to your single sign-on, customizing it for your processes, and integrating it with your other systems. This takes time, but usually less time than writing the system from scratch.

Building means that you activate your internal software development process, define requirements, document architectural constraints, and assign ownership to a team. The team breaks down the work into phases or user ...