Most buy vs build decisions that go wrong with buying is because there was insufficient due diligence on the vendors, comparison to other vendors, and general i

Most buy vs build decisions that go wrong with buying is because there was insufficient due diligence on the vendors, comparison to other vendors, and general ignorance of the thing being bought-or-built. The worst outcomes I've seen are when it's SOWs that are buy-to-build. That is - paying a vendor to build something that doesn't exist yet. It's like the blind leading the blind. You have to agree to these detailed specs and project plans and contract, and then at the end of the day hope they deliver because there's so much nuance in software it's not going to hold up in court or be with your time. If you did write specs and acceptance criteria detailed enough to be bullet proof, you'd probably have been better off just writing the software instead. My company did two of these recently, one ended up overrunning by 100% with 50% of requirements not met, never going to production and half the people on vendor side quit/fired. The other one went to production and then the vendor went bankrupt, lol.