Project Management

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What is the most consequential make-or-buy decision you've ever faced as a project manager?

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Eduard Hernandez
Community Champion
Product Operations Program Manager Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain

I once came across the story of how Richard Branson launched Virgin Atlantic not by purchasing a Boeing 747, but by leasing one from a US carrier.

Yes, leasing versus buying is not quite the same as the make-or-buy decisions we face in projects, but the underlying logic resonates deeply. As project managers, we face that same tension; build a custom solution or license an existing one, develop in-house or outsource. The decision shapes budgets and timelines in ways that are hard to undo.

So I'm curious: what's the most consequential make-or-buy call you've ever had to make?
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Lissette Indhira Pimentel Sosa
Community Champion
Program Manager| HARPER SRL Santo Domingo / Distrito Nacional, Dominican Republic
One of the most impactful decisions I've been involved in was choosing between building a custom solution and adopting an existing platform.
The discussion quickly moved beyond cost. Long-term maintenance, scalability, implementation time, internal expertise, and future flexibility all became part of the decision.
In the end, we chose to buy while simultaneously planning our long-term transition to in-house solutions. So far, that approach has worked well. We continue using the purchased platforms while developing our own internal systems, allowing us to learn, mature our capabilities, and reduce risk along the way.
As our internal applications are becoming more robust, we are gradually planning the migration of data and processes, with the goal of eventually operating primarily on tools developed in-house.

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