Settling For Less - The Off-the-shelf Solution

You've been searching the internet for months. "There must be some software for this," you think. Time after time the product you find fails to meet your needs. It lacks the right feature, costs too much, or requires a major network upgrade. When you finally give up hope a friendly stranger shows up. He can build that for you. He used to do that at Dell, Microsoft, or Oracle. "Nothing to it" he tells you.

After several months and tens of thousands of dollars you've start referring to the project as "the train wreck." Why did you think you should build it from scratch? Where did it all go wrong?

The greatest technology mistake a small business can make is to build anything from scratch. The last business you want to be in is software development. It's extremely expensive, high risk, and requires a skill set you don't have. Every year thousands of business owners make the same bad decision. A forensic analysis of each project would show the following basic mistakes:

You don't really know what you want. In software development there is an expression - "build the first one to throw it away." Until you've built the product you won't have thought through all the details. It might take several versions before you've figured out what you really wanted to build. In the meantime you've spent more than you can afford on the entire project and have nothing to show for it.

He doesn't know how to build it anyway. Many developers from large software teams have a skewed understanding of software development. They are isolated from 70% of the development process including design, testing, and implementation. They assume you will provide all of these services to them.

You can't afford a quality solution. You, your employees, and you clients are used to products like Microsoft Word and Quickbooks. These products function well 99.99% of the time and are fairly easy to use. These products also took dozens of versions and millions of dollars to produce. Though you may be able to overlook some deficiences in your custom product, your clients and employees will not.

The temptation to build what you need can be too great for many businesses. Unfortunately the technology service market, with its low barriers to entry, will always have new providers willing to take any job. If you settle for an off-the-shelf product you'll be much better off. Learn to live with its deficiencies and wait for the next version. By doing so you will save yourself tens of thousands of dollars and more than a few grey hairs.