By now, you will have a good sense of who your key end user group is, and they will be on board with you in this endeavour. You will also have a good idea of the features and user interface you would like for your application and this information has been documented and agreed to with your group, preferably, in electronic format.
Did you know that there is a spreadsheet tool that could help you calculate whether you should lean more towards whether ‘To Build or Buy’? Try a workbook tool developed by Craig Borysowich, Chief Technology Tactician, Toolbox for IT: “Using the Build vs Buy Decision Workbook”
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As a proviso, when I started this blog series, the application I had in mind was web based and hardware independent, so some of the workbook questions were not relevant and skewed my results. That said, it should be fairly obvious how your responses will impact the end results, so weight your answers accordingly. Try the exercise a second time, changing some of your weighted responses to gauge the impact. Regardless, the process of going through the exercise itself may give you reason to pause and reflect and to potentially consider some new factors.
See the page with a link to the worksheet just below. Save the worksheet with the rest of your project documents for future reference and discussion. Once this is done, and you’re ready to start, you may need to unprotect at least one worksheet. If you’re using Excel 2007, click Review –> Unprotect Sheet or use Excel’s Help feature in other versions. Click here for a link to the workbook page: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/enterprise-solutions/using-the-build-vs-buy-decision-workbook-12892
Note: Mr. Borysowich has detailed instructions in the use of the workbook via the link above. Also, if you are unfamiliar with some abbreviations, most can be found through Wikipedia.
As with Exercise 2 previously, you may want to complete this exercise independently to start, then compare results in a facilitated group session. What were your results? Were they similar or very different? Were those differences a result of varying opinions, a lack of clarity about the application or something else?
We would really appreciate your feedback about this exercise! Let us know if it helped, if it didn’t and how. Do you know of any other similar resources that could assist our readers?
In Exercise 4 next week, we will dig into some of the statistics and considerations to be aware of if your end results lean towards 'Building' your application.
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2 Craig Borysowich, Toolbox for IT, ‘Using the Build vs Buy Decision Workbook’
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/enterprise-solutions/using-the-build-vs-buy-decision-workbook-12892
