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Founders & technical leads · 20-minute exercise
Build, Buy, or Wait?
A decision brief separating implementation, organisational change and domain expertise.
- State the decision and the smallest outcome worth funding.
- Inventory technical capability, process ownership and domain expertise separately.
- Compare a manual improvement, a constrained purchased tool and an internal build.
- Include integration, support, security, training, exit costs and consequences of failure.
- Choose a reversible next test or defer pending evidence. Set an accountable decision owner.
Your worksheet
No confidential information. Filling this sheet does not send data to an AI provider. Blank prompts can be copied separately.
Optional prompt · use only approved inputs
Help compare manual improvement, buying a constrained tool, and building a system. Ask what decision we need, our real capabilities and the cost of mistakes. Include ongoing ownership and domain expertise. Separate estimates from measured costs. Recommend a reversible test or waiting for evidence. Do not invent a universal build/buy ratio.
Using this prompt in another service sends your inputs to that service. Check its settings first. It is not a tested guarantee of output quality.
Before you use the result
- Is the smallest useful alternative included?
- Who maintains and supports the result?
- Are cost estimates clearly labelled and bounded?