January 10 2019
I love it when CTOs and technology leaders take pride in their work. They believe they can do anything and many times they are absolutely right!
A tech leader with a unique understanding of a company's customer base, coupled with the unique strengths of the organization, are in a great position to create innovation that cannot be built by anybody else.
There are times, though, when technology teams take this philosophy too far. They believe they can build EVERYTHING their company needs. They don't trust or respect third party companies that possess a deep understanding of a particular type of technology solution because it "was not invented here." Because of their ignorance, arrogance, insecurity or budget constraints, some internal technology teams try to build every type of technology, regardless of the skillset of the internal team.
Here's a great case in point: the airline industry.
I have been using GoGo Inflight Internet services since its inception several years ago. Through hard work and a steep learning curve, they perfected their service to a point where it had a ton of unique advantages:
Now let's look at what American Airlines, as an example, is doing today.
They somehow believe that they can deliver inflight internet service themselves better than a company that dedicated all of its development resources to creating one center of excellence can. Guess what? They were wrong. Here's what the inflight service on American Airlines looks like today:
Think about your business. Have there been times when you've been held back on providing the best service you can because you refuse to admit that you are not well-suited to build and deploy the software yourself?
Have there been times when your CTO tells you they can build it even though there are readily available options on the market that leverage the latest in technology efficiencies? What is the opportunity cost of tying up your internal team on something that could be outsourced?
Have you ever experienced a time when it took your company a whole lot longer than you thought it would to deploy a new system because your team did not know what you did not know until they got into it?
Have you ever delivered sub-par service to your customers that had a negative impact on your business because you thought you could save a few dollars? Remember that even open source software managed and hosted by your internal team is NOT free. When internal resources are tied up focusing on something that could be deployed more quickly/easily from a third party source, you are distracting your internal team from what they do best.
If you're struggling to know what your team should focus on and what is better outsourced, we have a great technology consulting team led by David Gumpper, former CTO of Michael Saunders and Company, to help you work through these important decisions.
To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.