When all the features needed by the users at a given customer are available one could consider this a success. The users have their requirements met and the software vendor has a model that works for them. Unfortunately, there is a problem: All those features that are present in the software but that are not needed by a given user add overhead for the customer and their users. First and foremost, the features are visible and at best may just take up space in menus, toolbars, etc but at worst may confuse the users or make use of required features more complicated. This often translates to lost productivity and increased training effort. The additional features are also likely to result in a higher resource usage, such as memory and storage space as well as network utilisation, which translates into higher capital expenditure for hardware and increased operational costs.
https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/buy-versus-build-shift-issues-buying-software
An extreme case is Microsoft Word. A blog post on Microsoft's developer site reports that out of hundreds of commands in Word "five commands account for around 32% of the total command use in Word 2003"[3]. There are varying estimates for business and enterprise software but often the number of features used by a specific customer or user is estimated to be below 10% of the overall feature set.
Another option is to choose a software package that allows customisation through rules engines and workflow engines. The hope is that following a formal business process modelling exercise, producing a clear description of the business processes in a standard notation such as BPMN, the workflow engine can simply use that model without the need to change any code. In practice, however, it turns out that formally modelling the business processes is actually hard. In fact, many of the problems and risks associated with developing software are not caused by the actual programming but by getting the requirements right, and that is closely tied to understanding the business processes at a detailed level. Furthermore, capturing complex processes in a graphical notation adds its own set of problems. Even with sophisticated tooling navigating and manipulating large diagrams can be more cumbersome that working with a textual representation such as code. Features that facilitate collaboration between several modellers, such as version control involving merges and conflict resolution, are nowhere near as mature in workflow tools than in those tools available to manage source code.
A middle ground between source code and graphical notations are textual configurations and domain specific languages. In the end, they address some of the concerns, but still do not resolve the fundamental issue that any customisation adds risk and complexity.
Now the key question is: How much risk and complexity do customisations add? Unsurprisingly, there is no simple answer.
https://erik.doernenburg.com/2012/11/buy-vs-build-shift-part-2-and-3/
http://www.globenet.org/archives/web/2006/www.globenet.org/horizon-local/perso/guiderur.html
https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/building-reliable-digital-operations
https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/buy-versus-build-shift-issues-buying-software
An extreme case is Microsoft Word. A blog post on Microsoft's developer site reports that out of hundreds of commands in Word "five commands account for around 32% of the total command use in Word 2003"[3]. There are varying estimates for business and enterprise software but often the number of features used by a specific customer or user is estimated to be below 10% of the overall feature set.
Another option is to choose a software package that allows customisation through rules engines and workflow engines. The hope is that following a formal business process modelling exercise, producing a clear description of the business processes in a standard notation such as BPMN, the workflow engine can simply use that model without the need to change any code. In practice, however, it turns out that formally modelling the business processes is actually hard. In fact, many of the problems and risks associated with developing software are not caused by the actual programming but by getting the requirements right, and that is closely tied to understanding the business processes at a detailed level. Furthermore, capturing complex processes in a graphical notation adds its own set of problems. Even with sophisticated tooling navigating and manipulating large diagrams can be more cumbersome that working with a textual representation such as code. Features that facilitate collaboration between several modellers, such as version control involving merges and conflict resolution, are nowhere near as mature in workflow tools than in those tools available to manage source code.
A middle ground between source code and graphical notations are textual configurations and domain specific languages. In the end, they address some of the concerns, but still do not resolve the fundamental issue that any customisation adds risk and complexity.
Now the key question is: How much risk and complexity do customisations add? Unsurprisingly, there is no simple answer.
https://erik.doernenburg.com/2012/11/buy-vs-build-shift-part-2-and-3/
http://www.globenet.org/archives/web/2006/www.globenet.org/horizon-local/perso/guiderur.html
https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/building-reliable-digital-operations
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