Not Invented Here Syndrome – Case for Having it

In general, NIHS (Not Invented Here Syndrome) is a negative for your core business. Trying to re-invent something that already exists and probably does the job 10 times better. But what happens when an existing tool doesn’t do it better, or it is not customizable to your business, or it’s something that you’d pay wa-a-a-y too much just to use a fraction of what it can?

I ran into an old post from Joel Spolsky and tend to agree. Also, something that sales people are not concerned about, in some cases testability is not possible with out-of-the-box products, leaving your product blindly trust that it’s working.

Bottom line – I am not advocating for building it all. On contrary, if you can leverage an existing library/tool/product, do it. Just don’t sacrifice what your core business will rely on and find out that it’s missing.