I imagine this is the million dollar question.
The answer depends a lot on the context of each company. If a company doesn’t have the required internal skill to build the needed platform, then the answer is obvious.
Beyond that, I think a very useful tool to make this decisions is Wardley Maps. I won’t go into explaining Wardley Maps here, there are many excellent resources online for this, I list some of them at the end of this post.
Shamelessly took from a YouTube video of Ben from Hired Thought
In a nutshell, we can start from who is the customer of the platform and what are their needs. Next, put on the map how could the platform team fulfill these needs and in what stage of evolution are the components required for fulfilling these needs. Anything that is in the left side of the map will most likely have to be developed in-house as it is very unique to this company. Anything that it is a commodity (right side) can most likely be bought off-the-shelf or externalized. This is a very simplistic view and Wardley Maps do seem simple, but they are not easy to do. If this attracted your interest, I encourage you to explore them more.
Another aspect is how essential to the company’s business is this platform. Is it something part of the core business, then it’s better to keep it internal. Is it a concern on the fringes of the business of the company, then maybe it is simpler to externalize.
Finally, it is not necessary for the whole platform to be built or bought. The platform could be a mix of custom built and bought smaller components. Speed is essential and if something can be externalized or bought to save time while keeping the other aspects mentioned above in mind, why not?
Wardley Maps resources
- The Learn Wardley Mapping book, straight from the source.
- Ben from Hired Thought and his YouTube videos