product · decision template
Build vs buy
Before engineering writes a line.
The question
Should we build this in-house, or buy a vendor solution?
Opening context for contributors
Each side document: total cost of ownership over 24 months, who owns the integration on day 365, what we lose if the vendor changes pricing or shuts down, and what we lose if our build team gets pulled to higher-priority work.
When to use this template
- Vendor evaluation that drifted into 'we could just build this'
- Mid-tier infra decision